Waking Dreams
by mgsylvester
Summary: When the team starts having each other's nightmares, they realize that someone has been inside their minds. Someone's been toying with them. They don't know who. They don't know how. All they know is that suddenly each one of their team members knows every painful truth about them. And with a team that's still a ticking time bomb, no one knows who will be left when the smoke clears
1. Chapter 1

**AN: OK, so this is my first fic, so be gentle. Happens after CA:TWS and Iron Man 3. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. I'm not Stan Lee, and if I was, that'd be pretty freaking awesome. **

* * *

The first thing Tony registered was the cold.

He opened his eyes, and around him was pure, unaudited ice. It was clear blue, stingingly cold, and he was _inside _of it. He couldn't move or speak. He was used to the slight feeling of claustrophobia; the suit didn't have all that much elbow room. But never to this extent. He could hardly breathe, not only because there was ice over his lips, but because the weight of the ice on his chest was crushing his lungs. Hypothermia was seeping into his stiff fingers. The only thing he could do was close his eyes and dream.

When he opened his eyes again, he had been transported to a different place, maybe even a different era. Regardless, the ice was gone, and the fear that threatened another panic attack had dulled. It settled mid chest, where the arc reactor used to sit.

Tony was now leaning against a building that could only be in Brooklyn, though where he wasn't sure. There was something wrong with the picture, but his brain hurt too much to process what was out of place.

Instead, he found himself following a teenager, not more than seventeen. He looked vaguely familiar, though again, Tony couldn't figure out why. He was tall in stature, lightly muscled, brown hair swept over his head. He was wearing trousers that cut off mid-ankle, suspenders and a striped shirt. A pair of aviator sunglasses hooked over his ears.

Tony followed the boy into a building, ghosting along the sidewalk, no one even noticing him. He hardly even noticed himself, which was a first for him.

The world around him twisted violently, and when the haze cleared, he was standing in a room, and the teenager was sitting on a bed. "You know you don't have to do this." The boy was saying. "It's only been two weeks."

"I have to." A semi-familiar voice responded from an adjacent room. Tony couldn't see, but he assumed it was the bathroom.

"You don't have to do anything, dork." The teen on the bed relaxed against the pillows. "You can have more time."

"I don't need more time." The voice was closer, and both Tony and the teen looked up to the door to the bathroom.

That's when Tony knew for sure he was dreaming.

Silhouetted by the light from the bathroom stood Steve Rodgers. He looked like he was maybe twelve, frail and thin. Surprised dropped into Tony's stomach. Steve was hardly five foot, his face drawn and thin, hair a pale, weak blonde. He stood, shirtless, his ribs protruding from his waxy skin. His stomach hinted of malnutrition or sickness. "I'm sixteen, Bucky." Steve was saying, walking on chicken legs to a dresser. "I can take care of myself."

"Steve." There was something in Bucky's voice that made both Tony and dream-Steve pause. Bucky gave Steve and important look and said, slowly. "Your mom just died. I don't—"

Bucky was cut off by a nasty bought of coughing emanating from Steve's chest. Steve buckled over, his abdomen contracting, his lungs wheezing out air. The coughing grew thick and wet, and Steve covered his mouth quickly. Tony noticed that when he straightened and withdrew his hand, it was spotted with blood.

Steve turned away, reaching for a shirt. Bucky had sat up, his look pinched. He tried again. "Look, you're sick, and—"

"Bucky, I've been sick my whole life." Steve said hoarsely, pulling the shirt over his head with trembling fingers. "And as for my mom?" he broke off, his voice wavering. "I've got you, don't I?"

For a frozen moment, Steve purposely met eyes with Tony, and the world around the two of them stopped. For a moment, Tony was hit with emotion so fierce and so strong he staggered backwards. There was pain, both physical and emotional. There was loss, so fresh and open that it pulsed like a flowing wound.

It took him a moment, but Tony realized that these emotions were not his own. They were Steve's.

Tony was disoriented. Here he was, standing with a frail, weak version of their fearless Captain, a man who he'd never seen emotion on his face, who'd forged into battle by his side without even flinching. Who woke up from the ice and hadn't seemed to look back.

Tony realized, in that moment, that there was a lot he didn't know about Captain America.

Steve's young eyes slid from Tony's, and the scene around him changed.

Steve was still young, still overly sick and frail, but they were now standing in an alleyway. Blood touched the corner of Steve's mouth.

A few feet away stood a different version of Bucky. He was no longer a fit teenager, with combed hair and an endless smirk. He was now The Winter Soldier, a mess of metal and hair and bruises. And anger. The anger pulsated around him, a barrier of pure energy and hatred.

"You once told me you were with me!" Tony's eyes flashed to Steve, who was shouting at Bucky, standing as tall as his weak frame would let him. "'Till the end of the line!" Steve wheezed through his last few words, his eyes shining. Within Steve's face, Tony saw the loss of the only thing Steve had ever had.

Bucky's fierce eyes met Steve's. They were dead. "This is the end of the line." Bucky said, and then raised his arm. Steve wasn't fast enough, and caught his fist head on. The momentum sent the frail boy into a pile of scrap metal and trash.

Leaving no room to recover, Steve scrambled to his feet again, pulling up a trash can lid as a shield. Bucky easily batted it away, crossing the alley and closing his hand around Steve's neck. "Last stop." Bucky murmured, his voice a threat carried on the breeze.

Bucky's arm tightened, crushing every muscle, artery and bone in Steve's neck.

And then the whole world went dark.

* * *

Tony catapulted up in bed, sweat sticking the sheets to his arms, fear pounding through his skull.

Next to him, Pepper was already awake, scrolling through something on her tablet. Upon seeing Tony wake up violently, she tossed it aside. "Tony? Tony, you're ok. It was just a nightmare, just a dream." Her face carried worry, her voice dripping with urgent concern. She moved across the bed, gathering him into her arms. He felt her arms around him, their warmth and comfort, and relaxed into Pepper.

It had been a dream. Every moment—the ice, the fight—all a dream, thrown into Tony's mind. But Jesus, what a dream.

"New York again?" She asked, her voice soft. He buried his face into the crook of her neck. Dammit he loved her. In these moments, with only her around him, his mind clogged with his demons, he never loved her more.

"No." He muttered, unwilling to leave her arms. He did anyway, in the effort to pretend he wasn't fazed by having an inside look into Cap's mind. "Just got a few new insights of being a Capsicle."

"Huh." Pepper said, assessing him.

Tony thought for a moment, and felt a strange sense that his dream had been something more than a dream. He felt like it was truth mixed with nightmare, which was ridiculous. Cap and him were not friends. They didn't hang out, and they didn't talk. They tolerated each other in New York because they hadn't had a choice. Tony thought Steve was an old fart with a stick up his ass, and Steve had thought probably something along the lines of what everyone else thought of Tony.

That was fine. They worked together, got the job done, and went on their way.

There was a depth to Cap that Tony hadn't really realized was there before tonight. He hadn't really thought about it, nor had he ever really cared, but for the first time Tony wondered what was underneath the façade of a leader that Steve wore. For the first time, he realized there _was _a façade.

He decided to put the dream behind him. Ignore it, because that's what he did best. "What are you doing up?" Tony asked, feeling Pepper's eyes on his head.

"Working." She muttered, drawing slightly away from him.

He raised an eyebrow. "More like worrying." She looked away. "Keep doing that and you'll get wrinkles."

Pepper rolled her eyes at his weak attempt at humor, and Tony managed a smile through his shaking features. "Can you imagine what the public will think if I'm dating an old lady?"

She glared at him, though Tony could see the smile she was holding down. Though most thought his humor was tasteless and rude, Pepper took his jests for exactly what they were. Jokes. "You're not helping." She said.

"Yes I am." He said, sure of himself. He crossed the distance between them and placed a tender kiss on her forehead.

She closed her eyes, and Tony was sure she was reverting down her usual path. Pepper was still scared, still scarred from her experiences. And it hurt Tony every time he realized this. "Look at me." Tony said, seriously, guiding her face up to his. "I'll always be here for you. I'm not going anywhere."

Pepper opened her eyes, and her face was surprisingly calm and slightly amused. "You're still not helping." She said, and they both smiled.

For half a second, Tony's dream reentered his mind. He was still confused about its contents, still stuck between reality and fantasy.

But then his confusion broke, and he focused himself on Pepper. Because, for the first time in a long, long time, he'd seen a glimmer of happiness.

And he'd give anything to stay that way.

* * *

**AN: And thus concludes Chapter 1. I know it was short, but next chapter it'll be much longer. (I watched Iron Man 3 last night and really needed some Pepperony, otherwise it might have started differently.) I hope it was good! Thanks for reading. **


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Thanks for the response on the first chapter! I'll be posting sporadically at the moment, but once I get my grove I'll set a calender of when I post (maybe? No promises) I need to edit and stuff, so probably once I get the chapters edited I'll post. There's probably a better way to do it, but oh well. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: Still don't own anything, though I'm in the process of getting a cajillion dollars and buying Marvel. Or not. **

* * *

**Chapter 2-**

There is one perfect way to test a team's strength.

And that's not endless training, or team bonding or even a Shawarma outing. The best and only way to test a team is to flay each and every one of them. To bare them to each other, to dig claws into them until their guts spill out onto the floor until none of them can tell them all apart.

That could be taken figuratively or literally. Take your pick.

Some teams, rare ones, wouldn't bend under the weight of the truth. Though the only thing heavier than a secret is the exposed, raw truth, some teams would be able to take it. Friends that can let each other in, that can trust one another with their secrets, they would survive. When things get personal, when fears are exposed and secrets are dissolved, it takes a special sort of friendship to pull each other out of that rubble.

But New York's favorites? The team that almost killed each other right before they saved the city? They still had problems. And now they no longer had Fury to pick them apart, or Coulson to offer the support that they needed. All they had were each other, and that was a frail bond, to say the least.

You could say it was sadism, what he was doing. He was going to get a perverse amount of joy watching them tear themselves apart. Or maybe it was just self-interest. He had a certain amount of investment in HYDRA, though not monetary. He supported them like he would a sports team. As he did with AIM. It would help if the Avengers didn't stand in their way. And he would be thanked greatly for what he did.

He sat back, and he smiled. His plan had begun.

* * *

It was raining. The kind of rain that soaked to the bone immediately. The sound of it pounding against the window was calming, almost peaceful.

Steve Rodgers sat in a high rise in Chicago, watching from his nineteenth floor room as the rain fell onto the sidewalk below. He was alone, and the room was quiet. There were no lights on in the room, but the weak gray of the clouds outside spilled through the window.

His back was against the wall, his body parallel to the window. In his lap was an old sketchbook, in which he was absently doodling. He felt a sick sense of déjà vu as he looked up and glanced out the window for the fifth time.

He didn't know whether or not he was feeling paranoid or there was something out there, because he kept finding his tired eyes drawn to the building across the street. Each time he saw nothing new. Just the gray-red of the brick, the slick wetness of the rain, and the occasional flash of green or red from the stoplight on the street below.

Steve let his head fall back against the wall and his eyes fall closed. He was tired, though oddly he'd slept a full eight hours the previous night. His slumber had been dreamless, an expanse of blackness that was as beautiful as it was refreshing. Maybe the reason he found sleep suddenly so tempting was because nights like last night were elusive, and Steve craved another bought of dreamless rest.

Steve wasn't a stranger to dreaming. He'd been asleep for seventy years, for God's sake. He knew the affect it could have on him. The mind is a dark place, and being trapped in his for so long made him never want to go back. But today, he found himself bored and tired, a rare combination. He knew that he should be doing something, being productive. There was so much chaos in his world right now, so much that needed to be fixed. There was pain and anger and frustration that needed to be dealt with, but Steve found himself pushing everything away. Sleep was beckoning to him.

He absently looked down at his hands as they moved across the page. While letting his mind wander, the pencil in his hand had wandered as well. He didn't know what he was drawing. He squinted at the pale pencil marks and was surprised to see that his doodling had turned into a humanoid form. Steve took in the clunky feet and rounded chest, and an odd taste filtered into his mouth. On the white page of his sketchbook, a rough outline of Iron Man was being formed.

Steve curled his lip and tossed the drawing off his lap. He didn't know why his subconscious was suddenly drifting to Stark. It's not like they'd talked. In fact, the last words Steve remembered Stark saying to him were something along the lines of "Did anybody kiss me?"

Steve rolled his eyes, pushing away his memories of New York and stood up. He stretched his sore muscles, feeling a sharp sting where Bucky's bullets had buried themselves into him.

He pushed those memories away, too.

* * *

Steve was in a warehouse. It was cold, and he instantly knew that he was no longer in Chicago. Some part of him knew that he was on the other side of the world. He felt like he was in the army again, forging into an unknown place, far from home. It was a feeling that was hard to forget, one he'd discovered during his first visit to the Italian countryside. That was back when he was still a puppet on a string. (With a sad sense of reality, he acknowledged that he'd been a puppet on a string for a very long time. Until recently, when SHIELD had dissolved. Steve ignored, this, however.)

There were footsteps, light, stealthy, but they echoed through the warehouse. It was dark, and Rodgers could hardly see, but he instantly clicked into Captain America mode. The footsteps were fast, and they were growing louder, meaning whoever was running was running his way. He slunk behind a corner, peering out onto the main floor.

Long abandoned, the warehouse was largely emptied. There were a few old machines and scattered lines of broken cardboard, but the warehouse mostly consisted of boarded up windows and dust.

He took a step back, fully into his hiding place, and looked for some sort of weapon. Looking down at himself, he realized he was still in his light-washed jeans and heather gray t-shirt, not his uniform. Which meant that his shield wouldn't be nearby. He gave up the search quickly, finding nothing but darkness.

He squinted through the murky gloom and waited.

He saw the owner of the footsteps flash by him, stumbling. The person slowed, and then removed his or her shoes, which had been the source of the noise. Then, through the darkness, Steve heard something that could only be a cuss word, though it was a different language. What was it? Russian? Steve couldn't be sure, but after spending so much time around Natasha, he had a sneaking suspicion it was.

Steve furrowed his eyebrows, his brain whirring to life. He stepped from his corner and crouched down to examine the shoes. They were a black pair of deadly stilettos that screamed Black Widow.

He finally put two and two together.

"Nat!" Steve called in the direction she'd run. He took a last look at the shoes and started to jog into the obsidian darkness. "Natasha?"

There was no response. He picked up the pace. "What in the world?" Steve wondered, mostly to himself, pressing his feet harder into the ground as he quickened his pace to a sprint.

The master spy was lost to him, a fact that became quite clear when Steve realized he was lost. And there was no Natasha. He cursed her skills for a moment, knowing that she needed help. If he could only find her, he could help fight whatever was after her.

The thought gave him pause. What had ever made Natasha run? She always stood up to a fight, because she always knew she could win. Steve was confident that there was not one person on this earth that Natasha wouldn't fight to kill.

He froze, remembering something from New York. His blood ran cold.

There was only one person that Steve had ever known that Natasha didn't fight to kill. She fought him to harm. To cognitively recalibrate.

Steve heard voices coming from the catwalk above the warehouse floor. How had she gotten up there so fast? He shook the thought off and gave a running leap, as he didn't know how else to get up there. His fingers caught hold of the metal and he easily swung himself up. He wasn't as quiet as the spies, but they still didn't hear them.

He spotted Natasha first. They were both underneath the only light in the whole building. Looking at her face, Steve saw that she looked somewhat younger and a lot more beaten up than she had the last time he'd seen her. There was a cut beneath her eye, blood matted in her hair.

She was also on her knees, her chest heaving, hands in fists at her side.

Steve eyed the man standing above her and thrust himself at him, uncaring that he was a teammate. Steve was going to take Barton down.

But he didn't. Somehow, Steve missed. And then he found himself on the other side of the couple, still unnoticed.

Barton had his bow drawn, his thumb at his cheek. An arrow notched and aimed at Natasha. His eyes were their normal color; everything about his posture was relaxed.

Steve had never seen Natasha look so fazed. "Barton, please." She said, her voice still strong despite her shining eyes. "It's me. It's Natasha. You know me." She licked her lips, eyebrows pinching together as she grew more desperate. "I'm your _partner_." Steve though he imagined it, but Natasha's voice broke slightly at the end.

"You're my mission." Barton said, his voice gruff and hard.

Natasha took a shaky breath. "You can make a different call. You already have, Barton—"

"The Black Widow," Hawkeye began, and Natasha cut him off. "No, I'm Natasha Romanoff. I've never been the Black Widow to you, Clint. Don't do this. You don't know what you're doing."

"I know what I'm doing, Widow." Barton spat, his voice venom. Steve stood in paralyzed fear, watching the scene unfold. He didn't think anyone in the world had the power to bring Nat to her knees.

He knew he was dreaming solely because no one could ever affect her like that. He knew Nat, didn't he? She was the strongest woman he'd ever met, and not even Clint Barton could change that about her.

"Yeah?" She challenged, her voice hardening. There was his Nat, Steve thought. "And what is that?"

Barton smirked. "My job." He said simply, and without another word, his fingers slid from the bow and he let the arrow fly.

As always, it didn't miss its mark.

* * *

**AN: Thanks for reading! Reviews are appreciated, though not expected. Next chapter may or may not be more Clintasha. No promises. **


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Hello people! First off, I want to thank all of you so, so much! I never predicted any outcome at all, and I'm so happy that you all followed/favorited/reviewed. THANK YOU! **

**Also, I'm not sure about the whole Agents of Shield thing, and what happened with Coulson and whatnot ( I know he became the director but I don't know the deets) so we're going to pretend that some of that stuff never happened. Also, still unsure of where I'm going to put Thor in yet. Any suggestions you can PM me.**

**I'm posting two chapters at once so that I can shift away from all the dream stuff. I enjoy writing it, but I'm not sure that y'all want to read a whole bunch of chapters of pure dreaming in a row. Things will pick up, I promise. **

**Disclaimer: Still don't own anything. Apparently getting a cajillion dollars to try and buy Marvel is a lot more difficult than it sounds. **

* * *

"Hey."

Clint sniffed, pulling himself away from his thoughts at the whisper. Natasha watched him warily, watching his face rearrange into a familiar mask. His eyes probed hers. "Hey yourself." He said, shifting his position, his voice clearing. He looked at her for a few more seconds, outlined by the city skyline. "You ok?"

Natasha imperceptibly flinched, and suddenly couldn't meet his eyes. When she looked back at him, she hoped her features were clean. She took a seat next to him, letting her legs dangle off the side of the roof. Wind instantly whipped through her hair, and she impatiently brushed it aside. "What are you doing out here? It's late."

Clint looked away from her, past the spiraling buildings of Dubai, past the flashing lights of the city, somewhere far away. "Thinking." He replied, in a voice that implied that further inquiries would not be welcome. Natasha wasn't fazed. The man had been her partner as long as she'd been a SHIELD agent, and she knew when to press him and when not to, regardless of whether or not he wanted her to.

However, emotions weren't a big thing between them. A normal person might have seen their relationship and not even called it an acquaintanceship. But to Natasha, what she had with Clint meant more to her than anything she'd ever had in her life. Though she'd never let him know that. She trusted him with her life, which was more than she could say about anyone else. The rest was insignificant.

So what if she never knew he had a brother? She shivered at the memory and told herself it was only a dream.

"What are you doing up?" Clint asked, pulling her from her thoughts.

She froze and then recovered. She hoped he didn't notice, though he probably did. Just as she hoped he didn't notice that she didn't answer his first question. "Too much caffeine." She shrugged, avoiding another question. "I can take over the watch, if you want."

Clint glanced up at the light-polluted sky and then back at her. A smile was brewing at his features, and Natasha prepped herself for an eye roll. She knew he was going to say something idiotic. However, the cocky words never left the archer's mouth. The smile slid, he stood up, and then fixed his black jacket around Nat's shoulders. "It gets cold up here." He said, and she would have told him she could take care of herself, if it not for the fact that her mind was already wandering. By the time she looked up to tell him off, Clint was already gone.

Natasha looked out at the thriving city and took a long breath of night air. After SHIELD had fallen, there were a few HYDRA agents after Clint. (He'd done something stupid, presumably, and angered them.) Natasha had caught up with him straight from Fury's grave and they'd found a safe house together. She stayed with him. After all, they were partners. In this mess together. It was almost like a mission, but this time they had no orders and no handlers. This time they were hiding.

As the night settled into her skin, her mind drifted over the nightmare she'd had.

_ "Barney," Clint's voice emanated from the darkness. "Come on, dude, show's about to start." There was a pause. "Barney?"_

_ Natasha was aware as the world shifted into focus around her. She was standing in a room with two other men. One was older, clearly an adult, and the other one was just out of adolescence. That she could tell. She slid into the shadows, not knowing where she was or if those people were friendlies or not. She wasn't in a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later mood, so she let herself watch._

_ A door was pulled open, revealing a fresh, young looking Clint Barton. His skin wasn't kissed with scars. A bow hung loosely from one hand, while a half-eaten bag of popcorn was clutched into the other. He squinted into the darkness of the room. "Dude, you in here? This is like my third bag of popcorn, so if I'm late _and _puke all over the stage, I'm pretty sure we're gonna get kicked out."_

_ "Hawkeye." The older man said, his voice a mere grumble. Clint visibly straightened, his eyes adjusting to the dark. "No."_

_ "Is this—is this about earlier?" Clint sounded less sure of himself, his fingers wrapping tighter around his bow. "Barney, I told you, I wouldn't tell just as long as you stopped, I—"_

_ The grumbled from the older man turned into a laugh. "So naïve. So very naïve of you, Hawkeye."_

_ Clint's young eyes melded into panic, something that Natasha hardly ever saw on his practiced face. "Barney?" _

_ The one called Barney lowered his eyes, "I'm sorry, Clint."_

_ "But you're…you're my brother." Clint had protested, and Natasha hated what his tone was doing to her. He was so weak and alone, that she felt something almost akin to sympathy, and almost akin to…something else. _

_ There was sick laughter, a higher pitch on top of the low one. It grew and grew, until it had an eerie, ominous quality, like the shadows themselves were laughing. The dream suddenly swerved, and Barney jumped on top of Clint._

_ It seemed odd, that a boy who claimed to be his brother, who not thirty seconds ago couldn't even look at Clint, was now beating him to a bloody pulp. Hardly trained, Clint tried to scramble backwards, tried to reach his bow._

_ Natasha knew it was fruitless; he didn't even have arrows. And Barney was much bigger than his brother. Besides, Clint was outnumbered and undertrained. She could only watch as Barney procured a knife, and with the swift, practiced confidence of a killer, drove the blade into Clint's stomach. _

_ The wound immediately spirted blood as the knife thumped into him. Barney continued to beat him, continued to let his fists bite into his brother's face. As he punched, his arms elongated, his body thinning, his hair growing. His features blurred and then became clear again. He transformed until Barney was no longer sitting on top of a little boy, but Loki was kneeling on top of a bleeding adult._

_ "You are mine." The god growled, his voice cold and high._

_ Clint groaned and tried with all his might to get his weight off of him, but Loki still kneeled, continuing to crush him. There was blood everywhere, though Clint no longer had a knife sticking from his abdomen. The blood, however, continued to pool around Clint, soaking his hair and his clothes. There was so much of it that Natasha was sure that it couldn't have been Clint's. Regardless, it continued to pool, lapping against her shoes, spreading all over the floor. _

_ Clint's hands were weakening, his struggles growing more and more futile as the blood gathered. One hand balled in the fabric near Loki's chest and the other splashed into the lake of scarlet. He tried one last time to shove Loki off him, but his strength was waning. He head lolled to the side, lashes fluttering._

_ "Help me." He begged, his eyes looking into the darkness but somehow locating Natasha. "Nat. Please help me."_

And then she woke up.

Now, she was left with the unsettling feeling that she couldn't shake. She couldn't stop replaying the dream, and she couldn't seem to distance herself from it. Usually, she could shut herself down and push things away very easily. But this involved Clint. It involved something he hadn't told her.

It's not like he told her everything. In fact, she didn't know much about the man's life. She knew that he was orphaned at a young age. She knew he'd been in a circus. But the details of his childhood were never established, and she'd thought she was okay with that. But somehow, finding out that he'd had a brother that tried to kill him seemed like vital information to Natasha. If what she was feeling was right, and it was more than a dream, then Clint had kept a very glaring aspect of his childhood from her. She found herself not liking that, because she trusted him so much. And she thought he trusted her just as much, if not more.

She pushed down the sudden anger at Clint.

And then she shivered. It really did get cold up there. Drawing the jacket around herself more fully, she took another deep breath, ready to let her mind wander somewhere else. It would probably end up knocking at the door of her own demons, as they hadn't seemed to be rearing their ugly heads recently.

However, she was stopped by the sound of vibrating. Confused, she threaded her arms through the jacket and dug her hands into the pockets. In her left hand, she withdrew an old, thick Nokia cell phone from the last century. She hadn't even known Barton had it. Her anger at him slightly intensifying, she figured she had no other choice than to answer it.

The other person must have known she had answered, because he began immediately. "We need you to come in." The voice was serious, familiar. Her first thought was Coulson, her second Fury. It took her only milliseconds to conclude it was neither.

"How did you get this number?" She asked, her voice low and controlled.

"Does it matter? Romanoff, we need you to come in."

Her confusion clouded her judgment temporarily. "Come in _where_?"

There was cussing on the other end of the line. "Dammit. Forgot about the whole you-destroyed-SHIELD thing."

"Stark?"

"That's _Agent _Stark to you, Romanoff."

"How the hell did you get this number?" She asked, her confusion draining only to be replaced by frustration.

"We need you to come in." Stark repeated, and his voice lifted with another joke. "Now I get why Coulson did it. This is fun. Delta code 6-4-5-7 cleared for evacuation confirmed." Stark began babbling randomly, spouting off useless codes of words. He was entertaining himself, obviously.

Natasha fought the urge to rub her temples. "Can I help you?"

"I was actually looking for Barton, but you'll do." Stark said, pulling himself out of the joke that had gone on too long anyway. "But the gist of it is that we need you to get on a plane and meet me at Stark tower. You know. ASAP."

"Why?"

"Oh, well, the Avengers are doing some assembling, I suppose. I haven't looked at the itinerary yet but I guess there's some ass-kicking planned. You in?" Tony took a breath, and continued without even waiting for an answer. "You haven't had any weird dreams recently, have you?"  
He took her silence as the affirmative and continued on. "Then I'll meet you and Everdeen at 1800 tomorrow. Stark out."


	4. Chapter 4

Bruce had called him, and together both Bruce and Tony had come to the same conclusion. It started in the morning, after Tony had read the _Times. _He was on his fourth cup of coffee when his phone had rung.

Had it been anyone other than Banner, he probably would have ignored it. After all, official consulting hours were between eight and five every other Thursday.

"'Sup?" Tony inquired, lifting his mug to his lips once more.

"I need you to do me a favor." Bruce began immediately, his tone pinched. "A big one."

Despite Banner's relatively serious tone, Stark kept smiling. He rolled the coffee around on his tongue and swallowed before answering it. "Come at me." Stark replied lightly, folding up the newspaper on the table in front of him.

"I need you to tell me about Afghanistan."

The smile had slid from Tony's face, but he forced his words to stay light. "I thought you weren't that kind of doctor."

"I'm not kidding, Tony."

Tony let the line go silent for a while, listening to the buzz of the phone for a few moments. "Why?" He asked, his tone gradually losing its playfulness.

This time it was Banner who paused. "I—I just have a… just tell me."

"No." The word was quiet but quite fierce. It surprised the both of them. "I'm not dragging all that stuff up again, Banner. I'm hardly even over New York, which is only a step away from my time in the desert. That stuff is in my past."

Tony stood, looking from the refurbished Stark tower toward the city below. Though his own building had been rebuilt fairly quickly, the same could not be said for the rest of the city. The gray morning light sparked off construction crews and caution tape.

"But you still have the nightmares." Bruce's voice was a soft reminder, bringing Tony back to the phone call, and even, though only for a moment, back to the cave where it all began.

"How do you know that?" Tony was suddenly on the defensive. He didn't want Bruce in his brain, picking around. He didn't want his emotions pried apart and analyzed. He wanted them deep within him where he could pleasantly pretend they weren't there.

"Because I had one last night."

"Did you call me just to sympathize? I'm all for the bonding moments, but don't you think we could just blow something up instead?"

"No, that's not what I meant. I meant that I had _your _dream last night." Bruce had said in his quiet, confident way that sent goosebumps up Tony's spine. Before Tony could protest, Bruce continued. "You were in the Mark 1, the very first suit you ever built. You were 10,000 feet up above the cave, ready to get the hell out of there when it failed." Tony held his breath. "And you fell."

Bruce's words were met with silence. Tony had once had that dream before. He remembered it vividly. It had been terrifying. "I don't..." he trailed off, unwilling to admit to his confusion. It could be a coincidence. But Tony was struck with the thought that it wasn't.

"I was half listening when you told me about the Extremis thing, I'll admit it, but I do know that you were having some problems, right? I _felt _that in the dream, Tony. I felt your problems. It was inexplicable, but I felt what you were feeling. It was like I was looking inside your mind."

Tony sunk into his seat once more, his brain processing Bruce's words. "I had one too."

"About me?"

"About Steve." Tony said, his voice distracted. He was coming to whatever conclusion that Bruce had already drawn; he just needed a few more minutes.

He'd been right the previous night when he felt that something was wrong with his dream. He'd felt like he _was_ Steve. He hadn't felt like a bystander, though he'd been one. It was almost like he was…

It was almost like he was having someone else's dream.

And Bruce had _his_ dream. There couldn't be a coincidence there. He was angry at himself for not seeing it, especially because it seemed like Bruce had seen it right away.

"Son of a bitch." Tony said, his voice enlightened.

"Someone's playing around with our minds." Bruce declared assuredly. "And I don't know who, and I don't know how."

"You think it's Loki?"

"No. Probably not. He could use mind control, but it was in a different way."

"What about the others? Is this happening to them too?" Tony thought he already knew the answer to that. He'd had Steve's dream, which meant that Steve was probably having someone else's dream.

"Only one way to find out." Bruce said, his voice slightly disoriented. He continued. " This is… this is," Bruce cut off, and the two scientists pondered for a few moments. They were in over their heads with this one.

Still distracted by his racing mind, Tony murmured. "You think you can come to Stark tower, Banner? We're gonna need everyone for this."

"I'm on my way."

* * *

"Yo, Cap. We need to talk." Tony said, putting on a mask of bravado and pretending like this wasn't about to be the weirdest conversation in his life. It was easier, he supposed, that it was only over the phone.

There was an ungraceful grunt from the other side of the line and a mumbled, "Stark."

"Yes, it's me. You can hold the parade, though. We need to talk."

There was another grumble and a muttered cuss word. "I'm busy."

"What's the matter, Cap, wake up on the wrong side of the ice?" Tony shook his head, "Come on, this is important."

Steve's sigh filled Tony's ear, and after a few moments Tony heard Steve's full voice, fully awake. "What's up?"

He got down to it. "You had any strange dreams lately?"

"Strange dreams? Define strange."

"You know, dreams that are..were…" Tony raked a hand through his hair. "Dreams that aren't entirely your own."

There was silence. "Why?" Steve asked in a dark, curious tone.

Tony mentally cursed. A part of him had hoped it wasn't true. With a sigh, he shifted the phone to his other ear. "Get your Star Spangled ass back to New York, Rodgers. We've got work to do."

* * *

**AN: Short I know, but the Avengers are assembling! There's a whole bunch of plans going on in my mind, but I know for sure that what's coming involved a lot of drama, short bits of action, and even a bit of fluff. I'm enjoying this. ****My mom thinks that being a fangirl is ridiculous. She's obviously not one of us.**

**Also, this is slightly badly edited, but it's late and I'm not really that sorry. If you find anything wrong, you can bring it up if you really want to.**

**To my reviewers: **

**BoomerCat: That comment made me very happy. Just saying.**

**DragonAce1999: Sorry to confuse you. They're supposed to be mostly memories with a nightmarish twist to them. And yes I did take the time to decipher that really long word. And yes that made me happy too.**

**abusesailorraven34: I will definitely update. All this support is making my heart smile, which means I'll probably be writing constantly for the next, I don't know, millennium. **

**Thanks again guys. See you next chapter ;D**


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: As you all know, I'm the type of person to get really excited over one follow/favorite/review. So thanks bundles. Also, mad respect for Joss Whedon, as he got this group together without A) killing himself or B) having them kill each other.**

**Also, I decided to post twice a week, meaning you'll get between 2 and 4 chapters each week. Maybe more. **

**Disclaimer: Mild language. Plus, I don't own _Captain America_ (One or two), _Avengers_, or _Mean Girls. _(Now that I've-hopefully-got your attention...)**

* * *

Cap had been annoyingly early. The spies had been perfectly on time.

They assembled around the table, no one speaking. Yellow light dripped across the large room. Each team member was restless and irritable and eager to get back to their own lives. They'd been a team once, when the world needed it. Now that matters didn't seem so pressing, it was difficult to want to cooperate. They hadn't even talked, not really, since they got rid of the Tesseract. Each person had kept a cold distance from the other. They weren't friends. And that was that.

Tony sighed, knowing this was going to be difficult. It was a crazy idea, one that he still had trouble believing. They had someone in their heads. In their freaking gray matter, messing around, transmitting their darkest moments to one another. Tony admitted that it was probably a brilliant plan. Having someone know your secrets, someone you don't really know, will make you draw away from that person. Maybe in another universe something like this would pull them together, but the Avengers weren't strong enough for that.

This would make them hate each other.

Tony looked up to find every pair of eyes on him. It was clear that he was in charge of this little meeting, although he wished he wasn't. "So." He began. "What's new?"

Natasha shot him a death glare. "Get to the point, Stark." So much for small talk.

"You're all here because you've had a dream." He began, drawing blank stares from each member of the group. Except Bruce, of course. He'd already heard this spiel, and was pleasantly not paying attention.

"So?" Barton drawled. The man needed an attitude check. (Of course, so did Tony, so he let the comment slide.)

He hesitated, unsure of whether or not he'd jumped to conclusions. It had only been a one-time thing. And he didn't even know the details of everyone else's dreams. He toyed with the possibility with being wrong, and then dropped the idea. Simply put, he was never wrong. He took one look at Cap, remembered ice, and kept going.

"They weren't your dreams to have. It seems we've all traded nightmares."

"That doesn't make any sense." Steve put in, unhelpfully.

Natasha was already speaking, "So you're saying that on top of my own, I get to deal with someone else's demons?"

"Pretty much. Yes." Tony shook his head, trying to drive his point across without sounding like a lunatic. He was currently failing. A light bulb went on. "We need an example."

He let the words sink in, let his teammates figure out what he meant, and then the blank stares turned into agitated grimaces. "You think we want to bring all that crap up?" Natasha's green glare was cold and unwavering. "I'm a spy, Stark. You don't get to know my secrets."

"You don't have a choice." Tony said, his voice rising in agitated excitement. He realized he was letting himself get slightly angry, which was a bad idea, but he continued anyway. "You either tell the truth now, or it'll be put into someone else's head when we go to sleep tonight. Look, if you guys don't believe me, then someone volunteer and whoever had your dream will convince you."

There was tense silence. None of them wanted to fess up. Not even Tony, to be honest. Though he knew the content of Bruce's dream, he still wasn't going to volunteer. He supposed that was hypocritical, but he didn't really care. He didn't realize that the unwillingness to let each other in was the problem.

"Of for goodness sake," Bruce sighed. "I'll go first. Who had the dream about me?" Probing eyes met his, each with a hint of worry. "I'll be fine. Just do it."

More silence. It made Tony feel angrier, like he either wanted to blast Black Sabbath or push the table over. Either or.

"I did." Someone eventually said. Barton, who'd been unusually quiet recently, sat up a little bit straighter now that the attention in the room was on him.

"Well…?" Bruce replied, his voice half curious, the other half worried.

Barton looked awkward for half a second, before pulling himself together. "It was kind of a you versus the Hul—er the Other Guy, thing. You kept trying to get him to stop but he kept, well, smashing. It was pretty violent."

"And you felt my emotions."

This made Barton pause. Tony had never even seen the guy sweat, but here, sitting in front of a room full of semi-strangers, faced with the task of revealing emotions that _weren't even his own_, he was frozen. "Yes." He didn't elaborate.

"Well, enlighten the class, Agent Barton." Bruce said dryly, and had it been a different situation, Tony might have smiled.

"Anger." Barton said right away. Tony supposed that he was doing it like he would rip of a band-aide; quickly and all at once. "Fear. Loneliness. Mostly anger." He finished, looking at the group with level eyes and a blank face. He'd used no elaborations, no adjectives. Everything Barton had said and done was carefully purposeful.

Once glance at Bruce told Tony that he'd had the dream previously, and he'd felt those emotions. The room erupted as Natasha and Steve and Tony tried to talk over one another.

"_Guys_." Bruce shouted above the din. His voice was oddly deep and relentlessly authoritative. They stopped their shouting match, only to peer at Bruce. He didn't look green at all, but they still kept quiet. "I'll give you another example, just to drive the point home. I had Tony's dream." Bruce said, his voice returning to its usual curious softness. And then Bruce proceeded to go into detail about his dream. Tony could only watch as the words poured from his friend's mouth, as his deepest thoughts in regards to the desert spilled out across the table in a thin layer.

When it was over, Tony wished he still had an Iron Man, so that he could curl up and pretend he wasn't human.

"So what does this mean?" Steve asked, his face growing pale. The three previous SHIELD workers, Rogers, Romanoff, and Barton, all eyed each other wearily, each with the question _who had my dream? _etched on their faces.

Tony blinked, and then recovered. "It means," He began, shifting in his chair, "That we're all going to become _best friends_ in the next few days." He said with a wicked grin.

"Yeah, um, that sounds like a no from me." Clint said dryly, "I have HYDRA agents on my ass, and no time to have a playdate. Sorry."

"Barton, you're the one who spent half of The Battle of Manhattan trying to kill all of us, so if I were you I'd sit back down. You're the one that needs this the most." The words had come from Natasha, sitting at his right. She was cold and uncaring in her words, her face drawn slightly with anger.

Barton directed himself toward Natasha, his annoyance beginning to peep through the cracks. "Jesus, what crawled up your butt and died?"

"Stop it!" Tony cut in, sensing a fight brewing, unwilling to let things escalate. "Whether we want to or not, we're probably going to know a whole hell of a lot more information about each other in the next few days. We need a plan."

Cap snorted. "Tony Stark and strategy don't go well together." He muttered under his breath.

Tony was about to retort, even though Steve was, of course, right. He remembered standing in the open bay of the Quinjet, clicking his helmet on, ready to forge into the darkness, when Steve's voice pulled him back in. "_We need a plan of attack_."

He'd rolled his eyes under his suit. "_I have a plan. Attack."_

"Why, you got any input, Spangles?" Tony challenged. He and Steve were reverting down a familiar path. Evidently, fighting side by side hadn't changed anything.

"Can we please," Bruce pleaded, pinching the bridge of his nose in obvious stress, "Just stop?" The fighting faded into glaring silence. Bruce stood up, his face flashing green and then returning back to normal. "Captain, that was uncalled for. And Natasha and Clint? Have this cat fight somewhere else." He circled the room, the presence of the Hulk a ghost behind him. Bruce wasn't all that demanding of a person, but he could evidently summon it from somewhere. "Tony's right. We need a plan, especially because we're flying blind at the moment. And on top of all that, we need to work together. It worked the first time didn't it?" Bruce paused, waiting so that his next words would have the right affect. "I don't think that we should need someone to die in order for us to become a team."

"He's right." Tony agreed, refusing to let the silence fall again. Refusing to think about Coulson.

The silence still fell, however. Tony found himself wondering how they were going to fight an enemy that was inside of them. Especially when the only enemies they were finding were in each other.

"New York wasn't just a fluke, you know." Tony found that his voice was sincere; however, he didn't know where he was going with this. "We could really _be _something. I know we've taken some time off since then, but what better way to come back than to jump in with both feet? We can dive back into ass-kicking as a team, just like we did before. Except maybe this time we're not saving the world. Maybe this time we're saving each other."

"While I appreciate the sentiment—" Barton began, but he found himself being cut off.

"Barton." Steve interrupted in his quiet, important sort of way, signaling that the Captain was back and the man had been buried. "No." Tony inwardly smiled. Cap was on board. Though it wasn't difficult to get that particular pain in the ass on some self-righteous mission to save other people, Tony still counted it as a victory. "SHIELD used to monitor threats. I'm guessing someone that can access the subconscious was on the list."

"You forgot that you broke SHIELD." Barton snapped, miffed at being knocked down a peg by the Captain.

"And you forgot who you're sitting at this table with." Tony leaned forward. "How was Dubai, by the way?"

"The list can't have just disappeared." Steve gave Tony a cutting look. They were on the same team, but as always, that hadn't made a difference. "Those people might not be being monitored anymore, but somewhere in…" Steve struggled for the word, "in cyberspace, the threat list has to exist."

He must have read some sort of Internet safety pamphlet, Tony mused. One that said that everything that goes online can never really be erased.

"Banner, Stark, you think you can handle this?" Steve's blue eyes had melted from angry to inquisitive.

Tony shared a smirk with his Science Bro. "We can whip up an algorithm. If the old SHIELD left any trace behind, we'll find it."

"It might take a while, though." Bruce said softly.

"How long is a while?" Asked Clint.

"Days. Weeks maybe. I won't be positive until we actually develop it." Tony shrugged.

"Until then?" Steve cocked an eyebrow.

"Until then, you all are welcome to stay at my humble abode." Tony gestured around to Stark tower, which had been refurbished to look even more ridiculously beautiful than before. The dark city reflected in the shiny glass, and the soft, yellow light glanced over expensive fixtures and furniture. "And while we're at it we can work in some," Tony gave another wicked smile, "team bonding." He stood up and glanced down at his team, who all looked less than thrilled. "Cap, I'll leave you in charge of that one. We reconvene tomorrow at 0800."

Tony wasn't thrilled with his own idea, but he knew it needed to be done. They would either get eons closer, or they all would be ripped apart. He pushed his chair in and made his way down the hall, pausing only to call out, "Oh, and someone figure out what the hell Thor is doing."


	6. Chapter 6

They'd found where Thor was.

After a restless night of sleep, Steve had gotten up around 6:30, changed into a pair of tennis shoes, athletic shorts, and a dry fit t-shirt, and made his way into the common area. The Avengers were essentially crashing at Stark's house. After his last one had crashed into the Pacific, Tony had evidently decided to take over the last few floors of his building as his home. There was one floor of guest bedrooms, each branching off from a large kitchen and a living room, making Steve wonder if Tony had planned for all them to live together all along. He shook off the thought. He wasn't planning on staying for very long. They just needed to get this mess sorted out, and then he'd be back to focusing on Bucky.

He didn't make coffee—why would he? Caffeine wouldn't affect him. (Unless, perhaps, he snorted it pure. Some kids these days were doing that now, he'd heard.) The fridge was unsurprisingly empty, but his stomach was grumbling. He settled for a stale box of Rice Krispies, and munched on a dry bowl as he read the paper.

On the cover of the paper stood a picture of another city than an Avenger managed to destroy. This time it was London. Steve smirked. Maybe Thor would swing by New York before he returned to Asgard.

* * *

"I don't see how this is team bonding." Natasha said from across the room. Her hands were on her hips, and even through her blindfold, Bruce could feel her glare. She was stiff, on high alert. It pained him to realize that she thought that at any moment she could be attacked. She didn't trust them enough to be blind in front of them.

"Nat?" Steve was standing right next to Bruce, his back to Natasha. "You trust me?"

She hesitated. "No."

"Exactly." He sighed and looked at Bruce, who made a frantic gesture to his left. "Now, take a step to your right." Bruce made a hand motion to stop, and made the same motion to his left. "I mean left, Natasha. Take a step to your left."

Bruce watched as she did. They were playing a game that Steve had dubbed Save the Polar Bear. On one side of the room sat an old, ratty stuffed animal that Steve had procured from nowhere. On the other side of the room stood Natasha, blindfolded and annoyed. There were obstacles everywhere. To make things even more difficult, Bruce was watching her, but couldn't talk. He had to communicate commands silently to Steve, who then verbalized them. But, Steve wasn't allowed to see her, or any of the obstacles. He relied solely on Bruce's hand motions. And Natasha relied on them both.

"Do you still sleep with that thing Rogers?" They were in the gym, a wide room with high ceilings. So of course, the Hawk had found a nest. He called his jest from where he rested in the rafters, cleaning his bow.

"Can it, Bird Brain. I'm trying not to die here." Natasha said evenly, as Steve instructed her to take a few steps back. Bruce had accidentally led her too close to a chair. Rules were, if you touched an obstacle, you had to start over.

"I don't think that a dining room chair will be the end of the Black Widow." Clint said dismissively, running a finger down his now-shining bow. Bruce grimaced.

They'd all showed up more or less on time, ready to take whatever ridiculous idea that Steve threw at them. It was now ten minutes after eight, and Tony was still running late. They'd started without him. He'd show up eventually. The previous night Bruce and Tony had stayed up late in one of Stark's labs, pouring over a computer screen. Bruce, admittedly, didn't know much about the science behind the technology they were creating, (He was strictly a gamma ray, nuclear physicist sort of man) so he gave a suggestion here and there as Tony typed.

Bruce was now gesturing for Natasha to step over something that he thought to be a nail, and figured wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. As he squinted, he saw its rusty tip, and tried to get Steve to tell her what to do. Inevitably, Steve didn't understand; it was a difficult thing to communicate. _It's too early for this_.

"Where did you learn this game? The army?" Clint asked, half sarcastic, half curious.

Steve shrugged, but Bruce didn't miss how his eyes flashed at the mention of the army. Bruce didn't miss much. "The internet, actually. Nat, take three steps diagonally to your right."

Natasha missed the nail and got the bear. She tore the blindfold off her eyes, scrutinizing the small fluffy things in her arms. She looked back at the obstacles she'd skirted around and smiled, despite herself. Bruce felt a small spark of pride as well. They'd managed to work well enough as a team to get a sleek super spy around some chairs. It didn't sound like much, but to Bruce, Steve and Natasha, it felt like a lot.

"Alright, mix it up." Steve said, and Bruce found himself in the speaking position, Barton in the gesturing position, and Steve blindfolded. Natasha moved the obstacles around once Steve had his blindfold secured.

Bruce was staring at Clint, having turned away already, so he didn't see the thumbs up that Natasha gave him to begin the game. However, when Clint coolly jabbed a thumb to his left, he knew that the game had begun. "You ready Cap?" Bruce started.

"Affirmative." Steve replied, though he didn't sound very positive.

"Alright, then move a step to your left," Bruce squinted at the flat palmed, pushing motion that Clint was doing. "and then take a step forward."

Bruce looked at the archer as Steve thumped around behind him. Though he'd been bored watching, it seemed that Clint was now quietly dedicated to the game, a look of determination on his face. He wondered if the two super spies in the room could do a mission completely blind. Clint definitely couldn't; his eyes were his everything. The game was difficult, and definitely required team work, but Bruce wondered truly how difficult Natasha had found it. It probably wasn't too bad for her, but Bruce knew that she'd relied on his and Steve's orders.

"Take a big step over. There's, uh, some sort of object that you need to go over?" Bruce tried to translate the hand motions into words, but Clint and Bruce's brain were currently operating on two different wave lengths. However, this time Bruce had managed to read him correctly. Clint nodded vehemently.

They paused to let Cap carry out the command, but there was only a few seconds of silence.

"_Fuck_." A ragged cry of pain resounded from the center of the room, causing Clint's head to shoot up and Bruce to whirl. As soon as he turned around, he saw a blur that was Steve as he staggered backwards, tripped over the same chair that Nat almost had, and fell backwards. He landed, crashing through an old, wood workout bench they'd found in the closet. The wood splintered and cracked under his weight, until Cap landed solidly and firmly on his ass. "Fuck."

It took Bruce a moment, but he realized that the word had, indeed, come out of Cap's mouth.

Steve wrenched the blindfold above his eyes and reached for his foot. "Who put the _nail_ in the middle of the course?" He asked, mostly to himself. The whole room was still, watching as he drew his foot closer to him.

The nail had gone solidly through the sole of his shoe, his foot, and the other half of his shoe, poking out solemnly amongst the laces. Steve worked his fingers around the head and grunted as he pulled it out, letting it clatter across the floor.

That's when he looked up.

Bruce, as well as the other two in the room, were staring at the Captain, lips pressed together, light dancing in their eyes. Bruce noted something that felt like tension in the air.

"Was that—" Clint's voice was ragged, "Was that your first f-word, Rogers?"

With that comment, the three of them were in stitches, laughing like they hadn't laughed in a very long time. Bruce noted the flush that crawled across Steve's face as he watched them all guffaw, but in the end, Cap's smile overcame his embarrassment.

Bruce looked around, Cap had let his guard down and Natasha was grinning, and everything seemed right. Maybe this little exercise wasn't so ridiculous after all.

It was in the moment that they all were recovering, wiping tears from their eyes and taking the first breath after a long laugh, when Tony Stark walked in.

"Did you miss me?" He started, and then took in the room. They must have looked crazy. Cap on the floor, dripping blood. Bruce bent over, clutching his stomach. Barton with his hands pressed against his eyes. And Natasha blinking as she inclined her head, looking at the celling. "Woah." Tony paused, his eyebrows driving together. "What kind of bomb went off in here?"

Bruce couldn't resist once he saw the opening. "The f-bomb." He gasped, sending them back into giggles again, this time, even Steve's shoulders were shaking with laugher.

It was a dumb joke. But that was all it took.

* * *

"Damn." Tony said softly, "What a day. Cap popping his f-word cherry, Natasha teaching all of us the Vagina Take Down..."

"I thought I asked you to stop calling it that, Stark." Natasha rolled her eyes, placing the cool tumbler of Tony's most expensive scotch to her bruised lip.

He drained the rest of his drink and reached across the circle for the bottle.

To be honest, it had been an…interesting day. They'd spent it all together, each trading off the task of leading the "team building exercises." After Steve's game had ended, they'd played a mind game (Tony's idea, probably learned it in the Boy Scout's when he was nine), gotten take out for lunch (Bruce had taken credit for that, though she wasn't sure how ordering Japanese had any effect on how they worked with each other), done weapon's handling (Clint's, unsurprisingly), and then ended the day with sparring. The last idea had been her own. (And yes, she'd demonstrated her favorite move, which included using her thighs to take someone down.) She wouldn't exactly call their day a success, nor would she call it a loss. It had been simply…interesting. There was no other way to put it. They'd fought, each trading mean remarks to one another, but it hadn't come to blows. They'd cooperated, sunk back into friendship, only to be pulled out by a dry comment from Clint, or an outdated phrase from Steve that Tony couldn't resist making fun of.

They'd finished the evening with pizza and alcohol. Now, they were all sitting in a circle in the living room, a half-eaten everything pizza in the center, along with several bottles of Tony's best stuff. Clint and Steve both leaned against the couch, talking absently about baseball or whatever. Natasha had no idea how Clint had kept up with the Dodgers on all his missions, and didn't particularly care. His business was his business; he'd made that quite clear. (What the hell was wrong with her? He'd been like that since day one, so why was she suddenly acting like a jealous bitch?)

Bruce was lolling slightly, already several drinks ahead of her. He was keeping pace with Tony, which didn't seem to be a good decision. The man could put away enough drinks to fell an elephant, let alone a Hulk.

It was Tony's turn, again, to lead the activity. He'd spent the past few minutes thinking, as well as getting continuously drunker. "OK, I got one! Never have I ever."

"Let's shy away from the drinking games, shall we?" Natasha rolled her eyes for about the billionth time.

He stuck out his tongue at her. "You're lucky I have a backup." He said, cracking his knuckles. "Alright, so we're going to play a modified game of Truth."

Natasha's eyes flashed. "Stark." She warned.

"Modified, Romanoff. _Modified_." He tapped a finger to his temple. "Just one truth about you, something simple that no one knows." He had everyone's attention now. He took a sip from his newly refilled drink and said. "I'll go first."

Steve, who was oddly sober, let out a sigh. "Oh boy."

"Ready to see into the mind of Tony Stark?" Tony taunted. "Here goes." He said, lowering his voice to sound important. "I pick my nose."

There was a pause, and then the group collectively let out breathy laughter. "Are you kidding?" Clint asked, in between snorts.

"I had nosebleeds when I was little. The habit just…stuck." Tony giggled along with them. He'd probably regret saying this in the morning.

Natasha threw back her drink. "I'm not drunk enough for this." She said, just as Tony was asking for volunteers to go next.

"Steve!" Someone, Natasha wasn't sure who, suggested. Ever since his incident this morning, Cap had been the center of attention for longer than she knew he wanted to be.

It was too late for him to back down, as all eyes were painted on him. "Um." He started. His eyes ghosted across the circle, his lip curling. "I can't get drunk?" He said it more like a question.

"Not embarrassing enough." Tony dismissed the thought, as Clint spoke up. "How'd you discover that?" He asked, clearing wanting to hear whatever clever story was behind it. Clint had obviously made the assumption that behind the Captain America mask was a man who was less of a tight-ass. If this morning was anything of an example, he was. However, Steve hadn't found a reason to warm up to the group, and Natasha knew that Clint wasn't going to get what he expected. She'd spent a lot of time with Steve, and she still only knew him to be clipped and professional, having had only fleeting glimpses of his personality here and there.

Steve looked at Clint, his blue gaze unwavering. "The hard way." He said simply.

Clint looked away awkwardly. He'd read his file, of course. Natasha remembered that day, soon after Cap had been pulled out of the ice, when the two of them had poured over Steve's file. They'd learned of a head of HYDRA being single-handedly taken down by Rogers, of a man who'd saved the world by sacrificing himself, of a frail, weak little boy with the heart of a soldier. They'd read of Captain America, the man who lost his father and his mother. And then he lost his best friend.

They knew of his past. But they still didn't _know_.

Tony misread the silence, and butted in, his voice drippy and overly loud. "Have you been personally victimized by Regina George?"

Natasha's eyes flashed over to Tony, and she did something that surprised not only the group, but herself, as well. She cocked an eyebrow and drawled. "She doesn't even go here."

"Oh my God, Natasha." Clint's voice made her instantly look at him, her eyes trapped within his gaze. "You can't just ask people why they're white." They shared a secret smile that Natasha quickly wiped off her face. It had been a late night in a hotel room after a long recon mission, and there was only one thing on the television. That didn't mean she liked the movie.

"_Mean Girls_!" Tony squealed, "That should be our activity."

Clint had let his head loll against the couch. He was drunker than Natasha had realized. "You own that movie, Stark?"

Tony shrugged. "It's a classic." He rolled his head backwards. "JARVIS, access the online movie collection and play _Mean Girls_, would you?"

"Very well, sir." The pleasant voice emanated from a speaker near the ceiling, and almost instantly the room was awash with light from the television.

The room fell silent as each Avenger slowly grew invested in the plot. The only sound other than the movie was the hum of the air conditioner and the swish of breathing as each person inhaled. It was quiet, and dark, and the alcohol was beginning to enter Natasha's blood stream, and every time her heart pumped different parts of her body grew leaden. Her fingers, her arms, and then, finally, her mind. Her eyelids fluttered. Slowly, surely, each drunk little Avenger slowly conked out in front of the TV.

The team bonding was over.

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**AN: Relatively fluffy. But you can go ahead and take that last line as a warning, if you want. Reviews are nice, but just the follow is good enough :D**


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: Don't own it. **

**AN: Ok, so I know I said that I'd only post twice a week and all, but I was editing Chapter 10 and I'm legit super proud of it and super excited for you all to see it and then I just couldn't resist posting again. This was originally going to be posted on Wednesday with the next two chapters as well, because the next two are..well...actiony, but ugh. I'm going crazy so here you go. **

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The movie had ended, credits fading to black. Steve noticed that the room was abnormally quiet, and he spun to find all of his fellow Avengers dead to the world.

Tony's face was in the pizza, Clint's head was on Tony's back, and Banner was laying spread eagle a few feet away. It would have been a comical sight, had Steve not been so bone tired. He slowly eased Natasha's head off his lap; she'd rolled onto him at some point during the movie. Steve would have moved her earlier, had he not been terrified that she'd wake up and kill him. Anyway, he stretched out his cramped legs and walked on steady feet, the wound from the nail in his foot long healed.

He gathered five or six bottles, some empty, others half full, and placed them on the kitchen counter. He eyed a bottle of a high proof whiskey for a few moments, and then swiftly brought it to his lips. If anything, it was purely for the burn he felt as it scorched down his throat. He put the bottle back.

Rubbing his eyes, he thirsted for oblivion, when he suddenly heard noises. They were ragged, terrible, coming from a few floors down. The lab.

Steve took a last look at the sleeping forms and decided that he could probably handle whatever it was by himself. Besides, how bad could it really be?

He ignored the way his heart picked up as he made his way down the stairs, his bare feet slapping the concrete of the stairwell. He increased the pace to a jog, the noises intensifying. There was no complete way to describe them; only that they were sounds of pure _agony_.

Steve skidded to a stop in front of the lab door, wondering if he should have grabbed his shield if he wasn't going to wake everyone else up. He shrugged off the thought, ignored the sense of foreboding, and stepped inside.

He was met with darkness. There was one light on, shining harshly against the corner, and Steve made his way over toward it, trying not to bump into anything. The noises had stopped, and there were no beeping computers or anything. The silence scared him, but he continued moving forward. His fingers curled into a fist, because not only did it prepare him, but it also gave him a sick sense of relief.

As he neared the silhouette underneath the light, he realized what it was, and let out a relived breath. "Goodness, Stark." He said, taking a step into the light. He was working on another metal suit, a Mark forty-something. Steve thought that he'd blown up all his suits, but he let it slide. "What the hell are you doing?"

Tony's hands were bloodied, and when he turned around his eyes were frantic, full of horror and isolation. He turned back to the suit, grasping at a plate of metal that held the elbow piece, and pulled. "There's something in there." Tony gasped, his voice dripping with fervent desperation. "Steve there's something in there."

"What…?"

Tony had managed to pry the thing off, and he tugged at the arm for a few moments before it came off at the elbow. Steve had to jump backwards as Tony tossed the hunk of metal across the room absently. He watched, his fear slowly growing, as Tony tried to pry the damn thing apart, piece by piece.

"I—" Steve was panicked. "What can I do? Can I help?" What was going on?

Tony stiffened. "No." Hi voice was deeper, lacking control, full of anger and hurt. "I don't want your help, Bottle Boy." He held up a hand to stop Steve from coming any closer, and though the glimpse of it was quick, Steve thought he saw bone through the torn meat of his palm.

Bottle Boy? Where had that come from? Steve was stung by a memory, and he was beginning to understand, though not fully.

"There's something in here, I promise you." Tony was pleading, prying at the breast plate. He tugged and shoved and hit, but it didn't come apart.

"I believe you." Steve promised.

"No." Tony shook his head fervidly. "No, I'll show you. I promise, Captain. Please just…there's just….something there."

Tony darted around the back , disappearing for a second. "I'll help you." Steve promised. He took a step forward, firmly grasping two sides of the breast plate. With one weighty heave, Steve managed to tear the thing apart. He tossed it across the room and turned around, only to find sand pouring out of the suit, spilling from the metal. Coarse and hot, it infiltrated everywhere, grinding itself into dust. "Tony?" Steve called. "Tony?!"

Sliding over the sand that was still pouring like it was an hourglass, Steve went around to the other side of the metal suit. His own words echoed across his mind. _Big man in a suit of armor, take that off, what are you? _The words grew louder in his mind, bouncing there, pulling himself toward the darkness of the lab. Steve stumbled backwards, his eyelids heavy. He hit something hard, a table, and let his eyes fall close.

When he opened them again, he was watching Clint Barton at target practice. He watched as arrow upon arrow landed themselves in the red splotch on the center of the circle. There was a monotonous rhythm to it, as Clint reached for his quiver, withdrew an arrow, strung it, and let it thump into the target. He almost let the beat carry him off to sleep, as Steve was still massively tired, when he realized something was immensely wrong.

There were dozens of arrows on the target, each in dozens of spots. Some had split through other arrows, others had simply fallen off. In fact, there were arrows _everywhere_, on the floor, stuck in the wall, even tottering in the rafters. There were empty quivers all over the floor, maybe three or four of them. He'd been at it for _hours_.

Steve approached the archer wearily. "Barton?" He asked quietly, realizing that Clint was muttering something to himself. Frustration was rolling off the man in waves.

"I can't do it." He said finally, looking up to Steve with shimmering gray eyes.

"Do what?" Steve found that he was tired of asking that question. It seemed he was always a step behind.

His eyes skimmed down Barton's skin. He saw that there were two thin cuts in his fingers, dripping a steady stream of blood. They'd obviously been sliced by the string. Clint was not wearing an arm guard, and there were several exposed layers of muscle on his arm from where he'd shot wrong and the bow string had taken a layer of skin.

But Clint never shot wrong. Steve looked harder at the bull's-eye, and saw that, in fact, the arrows were not perfectly in the center. They were off. Only by millimeters, but those were like miles in Hawkeye's mind.

With a sudden, feral cry, rumbling from deep within his chest, Hawkeye lost it. He shed his half-empty quiver, letting arrows spill across the floor. Then, with unmitigated strength, Clint Barton broke his bow across his knee. It cracked apart like lightning. In a flash, Hawkeye was running across the expanse of the gym, the sharpest half of the bow swinging in his hands. With a second, tortured yell, he gouged it into the red center.

His momentum was all screwed up, so as he turned, Clint fell. He scrambled backwards across the floor, trying to look at where his bow dangled from the target.

He'd missed.

This made him angrier. This made him turn around and find Steve through the darkness, his eyes darkening until they were bottle blue.

Steve had no choice left to run. The fear was eating at him, the desperation from Tony had soaked into his skin and the frustration from Clint clouded his senses. Natasha was right. Their demons had now become his demons. Their nightmares had somehow melded into _his _nightmare. His heart throbbed, irrationally terrified, and he wrenched the door to the gym open.

And then he was running, painfully slowly, down a dark hallway. Occasional spots of light drew his eyes in, but he always regretted what he saw. A man beating a little boy until his glasses broke. A young girl with a syringe in her arm. A broken arrow, a flat lining heart monitor, a falling brother. A flash of green.

He reached the end of the hallway, blowing the door off his hinges, only to find that he'd finally reached his own nightmare.

"No." He uttered, as not only sympathy for the others' emotions, but the emotions themselves pounded against his brain. They wanted to come out from his mind. The sentiments became a living, breathing thing that thirsted only for devastation.

_I gotta put her in the water_. He stumbled toward the cockpit, the ground hurdling closer and closer, his veins already icing over. No matter what happened, no matter what alternate universe he was in, his dreams always ended the same way. He always found himself strapped in the leather chair, hands tightening over the controls. This was, and only ever would be, the only way out. _I gotta put her in the water._

He woke from the dream with a yelp.


	8. Chapter 8

**To my reviews and readers: Thanks bundles. Love you all :D**

**Also, I feel like I update too much, which makes me feel like I have no life outside of writing. (Which I don't, but whatever...)**

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"Are you mad at me?"

Clint was currently staring at Natasha's back, watching her as she unpacked a few things from her black duffle bag, shoving clothes into oak drawers. "No." She said stiffly.

She was lying, of course. Lying to an extent that Clint didn't even need to call her out on it. "You gonna tell me why?" He cocked an eyebrow.

She didn't turn around. "No."

He groaned. "Of course not. Could you, for once, make my life just a little bit easier?"

She turned around, snatched a bag near his feet, and returned to stuffing drawers. "If I'm such a pain in the ass then put in for a new partner, Barton."

"You'd never get another partner. Not one as good as me."

"I work alone, anyway." Natasha looked him in the eye. "Always have, always will."

He rubbed his head. His hangover this morning was killer. He didn't want to deal with this right now. "Well, when you want to talk…" He said. This time it was _him_ giving her his back.

"Don't hold your breath."

"Wasn't planning on it." Both of their voices were neutral, like they were having a detached conversation about the recent drought in Spain. If they hadn't known each other so well, they wouldn't have known that they were furious with each other.

He needed to brush his teeth and change his clothes. He tasted like sweat and vomit and he probably smelled worse. When he stepped from her room, he planned on heading straight to his, but something stopped him.

Well, actually, it was a big something. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, Tony and Steve were standing nose to nose, in some sort of heated conversation. Clint had no idea how it had started, or how badly it had escalated, but he knew he should probably get involved before things got any further.

"…and I'm still not afraid to hit an old man, if that's what you're asking." Tony was saying. Upon closer inspection, he found that Tony was holding Cap's shield. Uh oh.

"Oh yeah?" Steve cocked his head to the side, the bags underneath his eyes catching the light. There was a liquid threat in his voice, and Clint's heart jumped, and suddenly his feet were running beneath him.

He wasn't fast enough.

Tony's reflexes were quick, but not nearly quick enough. Cap's fist angrily swung out, but Tony lifted the shield to cover his face. Tony miscalculated, not knowing the extent of Cap's strength, and the shield went spinning from his hands with a reverberating bang. Nothing stood between Tony and Steve now. Tony could fight, sure, but not well enough.

Swiftly, Steve had Tony back against the wall, his head cracking into drywall. Steve's capable, angry hand slid around Tony's throat, lifting the man off the ground. "You're nothing without your suit." Cap was saying. He looked possessed, and Clint didn't even know how to react. Usually cool and calm and level-headed, Steve was able to look at any pressurized situation with a steady gaze.

Clint already had his gun drawn and pressed against Steve's temple. "Put him down, Steve." Clint threatened.

Steve's eyes hardly glanced at Clint. Tony was struggling, weakly. His brown eyes ghosted down the strong arm that was crushing his neck, and then lifted to look his attacker in the face. "This look familiar to you, Steve?" He choked out. "Any déjà vu?"

As soon as Tony's words left his mouth, Steve stumbled back like he'd been electrocuted. His blue eyes were bulging, spinning with fear and vulnerability. To Clint, the look in his eyes was pure _insanity_. It was hard to wrap his head around the scene. This wasn't Cap. Captain America was pretty much the only good one of them. He was the one who could take a punch and get back up, the strongest, the bravest. The best.

"Captain." Clint warned, causing Steve's crazy gaze to be cast on him.

And then Steve blinked. And the look was gone. He looked from Tony to Clint, who still hadn't put down his gun. He was breathing heavily, his face molding into severe guilt "How did you…?" Steve gasped, letting the sentence trail into nothingness.

Tony's eyes were wide, his chest heaving. "I had your dream, dumbass." He sputtered, though his heart wasn't in the insult.

Steve let his eyes slid closed, leaning his head against the fridge. It was then that Clint saw the sheen of sweat on Steve's forehead, and that the bags underneath his eyes weren't just a trick of the light.

Clint lowered the gun, but didn't put it back. "What happened?"

"Tony was being an ass, and we started fighting." Steve said, his voice strong, though the rest of him wasn't. "I brought up his father, he brought up my shield. Wanted to bait me by saying that since I got it from Howard, it really belonged to him." Clint sent a harsh look at Tony. That was uncalled for. Steve cracked one eye open. "And then I clocked him."

"No." Clint pressed, "I mean _what happened_? What did you see?" Obviously Steve had dreamed something the previous night. Obviously it was bad.

Steve had both eyes open now, but his mouth stayed shut.

There were two pairs of eyes on Clint's back: Natasha's and Bruce's. Nat had heard the commotion, which had caused Bruce to wake up from his drunken stupor. There were another two pairs of eyes on his face—Steve's and Tony's.

Clint prided himself on reading situations. He knew what to do, and when to do it. He could read people, as well. He could taste the tension, the unresolved issues, the fear that hung so heavily in the air. There was distrust all around him. As a SHIELD agent, he'd been on more missions than he could count. He'd killed probably more people that he'd saved. He'd both caused and stopped damage. Clint knew how to read a situation, and he didn't like where any of this was going. So, he let out a sigh, holstered his gun, and jumped in with both feet.

"You know that all of us trust you, right Cap?" He began slowly, his words heavy with meaning. "Every Avenger does. You're the only one that holds everyone else's trust."

"I don't—"

"Do you think that we'd have gone headfirst into battle under the guidance of a man we didn't think was capable? We've all read your file, I'd assume, and we all know who you were doing World War Two. You were a hero. You were the first Avenger." Clint took a deep breath. "None of us would have followed your orders if we hadn't trusted our lives in your hands. And look." Clint gestured to the window at his left, where the construction crews were slowly humming to life. "We won."

"Barton—"

"I've never been good at trusting." Clint cut in. He knew he'd have to get this done quickly, before he doubted himself. He knew that he'd read his teammates correctly. He was getting the same feeling he had in that warehouse in Romania. He knew, with clarity, that this was an all or nothing moment, just as sparing the Black Widow's life had been. "And when I was flushing out Loki on that helicarrier, I didn't want anyone else to order me around." He was going to say something else there, but he didn't think his voice would hold. He continued, "But you just looked at me, without judgment that I'd been doing the bastard's bidding, and asked if I had a suit so I could join you. You had _faith_ in the man who thirty minutes before had been an enemy."

"Clint." It was Natasha's voice. She was obviously unsure of what the hell he was doing, and she was trying to warn him away from wherever he was going. She didn't like to be in the position of not knowing what was going to happen. But Clint wasn't going to appease her. Not right now.

He closed his eyes, briefly, and took a quick breath before he officially took the plunge. "My parents beat me when I was little." He said. Sometimes trust is too hard to gain. Sometimes trust just has to be blindly given. "And then they died." Bruce made a noise behind him, something that sounded a lot like he was in pain, and Clint made an attempt to ignore it, because if he got distracted then he'd stop talking. (Clint didn't notice that it was a noise that Bruce frequently made to press down the Other Guy. No one did.)

If Clint was going to be a part of this mission, he was going to do it right. God knew he'd had enough of people screwing around in his mind. If someone was going to inject his teammates with his dreams, his memories, his feelings, he was going to be one step ahead of that someone. Either he did his own exposing, or no one did. His mind was his mind, and it was his responsibility to decide what he kept wrapped inside of it. He was not a SHIELD agent anymore, and he had fought with these people before. They weren't enemies. Might as well make them into friendlies.

"I had an older brother, and together we were shipped upstate. They beat us at the orphanage. I learned how to climb, how to patiently wait for the anger to calm and the bullies to get bored. I learned how to run, too, when Barney and I escaped." He could feel Natasha's eyes burning into his back. This was something he hadn't told her, and he was unsure of how she'd take it. "We joined the circus." He said, expecting a snicker or two. The room stayed dead silent, each person hanging on to his every word. A wave of indecision washed over Clint, but he shoved it off, summoned his strength, and kept going. "I learned how to shoot. I learned how to practice until my fingers bled. I learned accuracy, and then I learned pain.

"I discovered that my mentor and my brother were embezzling money from the circus, and when I caught them, my…" He cleared his throat, feeling his voice waiver. Clint didn't like talking about his past. He didn't like opening up. In fact, he was massively uncomfortable. He felt like the spotlight was on him and he was giving them an awkward strip tease. He was peeling away at himself until all the hard layers scattered the floor around him. This was something he'd never done in his life. But it was something that needed to be done. Fuck it, if he was the only one willing to do it, then so be it. He focused his eyes on Steve. "And when I caught them, Barney stabbed me in the back. He'd had always been jealous of me; I was, well, the prized Barton, the kid with the aim. The jealousy had slowly faded into hatred, and that bastard left the knife in my back and my broken body in the alley."

Clint shrugged, "I picked myself up, recovered from the loss, and started killing people for money." He paused for a moment, wanting to turn and meet eyes with Natasha. He was now entering into territory she knew about. In fact, he'd done something similar during her first days at SHIELD. He'd let her in, related to her, so she would stop pushing him away. (She continued to push him away. Clint still wasn't quite sure if he'd succeeded in that particular task.) "My career as an assassin was short-lived. It ended when SHIELD stuck a gun in my face and gave me an ultimatum." He wiped sweaty palms on his pants, feeling the hangover pressing at his stomach. "I never looked back.

"Until now, of course. The very way that I've been living is threatening this whole team. I've never been big on emotions. They don't have a place in my line of work. And now keeping them in is just making it worse, threatening to tear us all apart. And if the world doesn't have us, then what does it have?" Clint swallowed, ready to drive his point home. "We don't have a choice here. We either give in or get out, because if we can't trust each other with our secrets than we _can't win_." Clint was slowly losing steam, his strength waning. More and more of him was screaming at him to _just shut up_. "So you want to know me? You want to know what I'm feeling? I'm pissed at Natasha, wickedly hung over, and thoroughly embarrassed that I just spent the last five minutes spilling secrets that I've spent years covering up." He cast a hard look from Tony to Steve, each of them with unashamed sympathy in their eyes. "When you guys want to start being a team again, you know where to find me."

* * *

Tony knew it was going to be a bad day when he woke up with his face in a pizza. Normally, that would be a teenager's wet dream, but somehow it wasn't all that great. The first thing he'd registered when he opened his eyes was that he smelled like old marina sauce. And then he realized there was a mushroom stuck to his forehead and two onion slices in his ear.

He knew it was going to be a bad day when he stumbled into the kitchen to wipe the grease of his face and then stumbled right into a fight with Steve. He knew it was going to be a terrible day when the private super spy led the way and opened up to a hungover team. And then Bruce had left shortly after, retreated into his room like he was in an unstable situation. Tony knew that something was wrong with him, but he didn't know what.

He was positive it was going to be a bad day when, before he could even process the Hawk's words, Pepper came home.

He conveniently forgot to tell her about their four house guests. And she conveniently walked in on a living room full of the remnants of last night, Cap's shield embedded into a wall, and four hungover, pissed off super heroes.

And the final nail in the coffin? That one didn't come until a few hours later. That came when HYDRA came.

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**AN: Got a little cliffhanger there for you guys. Reviews are definitely welcome. See you next chapter ;D**


	9. Chapter 9

**The wait is up... **

**Disclaimer: Violence, bad language. I also don't own _Avengers: Age of Ultron_, though I wish I did.  
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"So, what do you think?"

Natasha gazed at the other woman over her mug of coffee, rolling her words around before she responded.

When Pepper had come home that morning, she'd been angry at Tony, to say the least. So, she'd looked at Natasha and the both of them had gotten the hell out of that tower. The air had begun to feel too weighty, too suffocating for Natasha to breathe, so she'd jumped at the chance to leave, even if it was with a woman she hardly knew.

"I'm not going to follow Barton down the yellow brick road, if that's what you're asking." Natasha said seriously. They'd been down at the coffee shop for about an hour now, and in the relative quiet, Natasha had found herself filling Pepper in on the past twenty four hours.

"He's right, you know." Pepper replied quietly, fanning steam away from her fresh Mocha Latte.

Natasha fought off a groan. Of course he was right. When was he ever wrong? Clint knew what he was doing, and he never made a move without being fully aware of the consequences. It might have seemed like rash, but Clint had not once lost control of the situation. And he'd spilled out his soul in a way that made him seem unashamed of his past. Almost like he was capable of trust, he'd just learned not to use it. It had been so goddamned clever and so goddamned perfect that it made Natasha even angrier at him.

He was always the one to take the leap of faith, though he always seemed like the one who couldn't possibly trust a soul. In a way, it was fitting for Clint to be the first one to open up, because, in the first place, he was so _closed_.

And the worst part of it all? Now she could predict the future. She knew that just as he did, the others would fall in line. Steve first probably, because he had the least to lose, and then Bruce, and then Tony. It's not that she didn't want them to trust each other, and she definitely wanted them to work well as a team, but it was happening in a way that made her head hurt. And her heart. Because, she wasn't just mad at Clint, not really. She was mad at herself, for never understanding how to be sympathetic. She was mad at the past, for all the jokes she'd made, not knowing how they'd hurt him. She was mad that he'd been so willing, so able to let his teammates have a look underneath the façade, and had not once allowed her in that far.

She was mad that she was just now realizing how attached she'd come to him. She was mad about how this whole situation was making her feel. Not that it was love, and not that it was anything special, but that it _meant _something. She'd never known the extent of their relationship, not even when she'd been hell-bent on getting him back from Loki. And now that her head was full of dreams and twisted memories and forgotten emotions, she didn't even know where she stood.

The ground was shaking beneath her. If she closed her eyes, she could see that everything she'd built her new life on had been unstable. Her cold distance from people. Her dedication to work. In the effort to never get hurt like she'd had in the Red Room, she had ended up hurting herself.

And of course it was freaking _Clint _that made her see that. So she wasn't going to open up. Not to him. Not to anyone. Just because it was an unstable way to live didn't mean that she was going to fall.

She was about to respond to Pepper, when something caught her eye in her peripheral vision. There was a customer about three tables down who'd jerked his elbow slightly, almost as if he was making a move to his waistband. However, he was just casually flipping the page in a newspaper.

It didn't matter. Natasha's training was kicking into effect and she took in the scene around her. It was a sunny morning, crisp enough to be comfortable, but warm enough to still feel like summer. There were puffy clouds in the sky. Around her, New York pattered on, and she could hear the drone of people and the clicking of feet against busy sidewalks. The air was still and the construction crews were quiet.

The man looked familiar. Almost like he was a fellow agent that she'd handed paperwork to, maybe a man she'd passed in the hallway on the helicarrier.

Another movement had her in action. She sprung up from her seat, knocking her coffee over. She slid across the table, landing both feet into the man's chest and knocking the chair over. He hit the sidewalk with a crack and Natasha knelt over him, a hand at his neck.

"Who are you?" She demanded fiercely, "What do you want?"

For a moment he just stared at her, making her wonder if she was just paranoid. And then his face broke into a grin, and he jerked his jaw. The cyanide pill was already broken by the time Natasha could react. "Hail HYDRA." The man stuttered, his mouth already foaming.

The moment the life slid out of his eyes was the moment that the battle started.

* * *

"Stark." The voice behind him was so weak and so quiet that Tony half expected to turn around and see the Steve from the dream, the one with the emaciated look and the bloodied cough.

"What do you want?" Tony asked hoarsely, too exhausted to come up with anything cleverer. He was working on a new project, which was hardly in production. Right now it was only an idea on a screen.

"To apologize." Steve said, his voice only marginally stronger. Tony stood up and turned around.

The two men who'd seen each other's souls looked at each other for a long moment. "It's just…" Steve sighed. "Somethin's been inside my head, and something's screwing everything up." He looked up, shook his head, and let out one puff of laughter. "I'm not adjusting well."

"To this situation or in general?" Tony finally asked.

Steve didn't answer. He didn't need to.

For the first time, there was no animosity that hung between them. "You want to see what I'm doing?" Tony asked, ignoring the larger conversation that needed to be had. They'd have it sooner or later. Either that or they'd kill each other.

"I won't understand." Steve took a step closer.

"Not if you don't try." Tony agreed, sidestepping and letting Steve get a closer look at the screen. "I don't think there's much you can't do, Cap." He continued, gesturing to the screen.

Steve squinted at it. Tony was no stranger to building robots and AIs—he had Dummy and JARVIS. This was a mix. Tony had hardly started working on it. The drama over Iron Man had barely faded, and he hadn't gotten quite bored enough yet to really put all his effort into the project. Pretty much all he had was an idea and a sketch. Simple enough.

Steve let out a low, impressed whistle as he took in the diagram. "Ultron, huh?" He asked, "Sounds pretty sci-fi if you ask me."

Tony laughed, "Everything sounds sci-fi when you ask you." He said, and was glad that he didn't find Steve's fist in his face. Instead, he found a slight smile brewing on Steve's All-American features.

That's when everything fell apart.

They both heard the sound at the same time, coming from the street below. Screaming. Fighting. Tony glanced out the window and then stumbled backwards. _Shall we try Miss Potts, sir?_ He blinked the words away, a panic attack bubbling through his chest. No matter how hard he tried, the sounds were still there. _Might as well, J_. Black spots suddenly decorated the lab, spots that weren't there a second before. His mind lurched and his heart skipped a beat. _Stark, you know that's a one way trip. _His stomach leaped into his throat, and he had the distinct feeling that he was falling, falling, dropping 30,000 feet from an open wormhole, falling….

And then a warm hand came down on his shoulder, bringing with it a sense of bottomless clarity.

"Tony?" Steve looked worried, his hand tightening on Tony's shoulder. "Tony, what's wrong?"

Tony forced himself back to reality. "We gotta get down there." He said, jogging toward a pile of electronics and grabbing a comm. link to JARVIS. He darted from the lab, Steve hot on his heels.

They took the stairs up. Steve bounded across the living room and into the kitchen. While Steve was prying his shield from the wall, Tony pounded on Clint's door. "Barton!"

"I know." A voice from inside responded quickly, and the door swung open. Barton flicked out his collapsed bow and shouldered his quiver. He took one look at Tony and tossed him a .9 millimeter Glock.

"What's this for?" Tony looked down at the gun.

"You don't have a suit, do you?" Barton replied, leading the way to the elevator, where Bruce stood, having already summoned it.

"You coming, Cap?" Tony tossed a look over his shoulder.

"Taking the stairs." Steve's voice said at the door to the stairwell. "It'll be faster."

Tony snorted, and the three other Avengers stepped through. "JARVIS, take us down." Tony commanded and the elevator hummed to life.

They rode it down. Tony wished that one of them could fly so that they wouldn't have had to take such a mundane route of transportation. It was an odd feeling, shifting around in the descending box, knowing that when the doors opened they'd be forging into the fray. Bruce rolled on the balls of his feet, his breath audible but controlled. He was slowly undoing the buttons on his man looked _ready_. And Tony wasn't sure whether or not to be afraid for himself or afraid for those HYDRA assholes.

Tony cast him a look. "What?" Bruce shrugged, peeling the shirt off his shoulders. "I'm not ruining another shirt today. I just bought this." Tony tried to smile, silently amused, as well as amazed at how well Bruce could control himself. He wondered if the last time he let out The Other Guy was The Battle of Manhattan. He wondered how he fought down the urge during the past few days of insanity.

"Ground floor." JARVIS said pleasantly, and the doors opened, and the chaos began.

* * *

Steve reached the street first. Natasha was engaged in her own battle. It didn't matter much, as Steve was suddenly too occupied to go over and help her.

He had no idea where all these people had come from, and he no idea why they were here. Steve took a quick inventory, glad to see there weren't many HYDRA agents, and focused on taking them down.

He heard a bullet at his left and twisted his shield to cover himself. He heard the _ping_ against the vibrainium, and watched as it bounced back and buried itself in a man's eye socket. Another man stepped from behind the first one as he fell, dropping his weapon. It would be useless against the Captain.

With practiced ease, Steve threw his shield and felled the second man easily, as it caught him underneath his neck. Unfortunately, after slitting the man's throat, it bounced to the ground harmlessly, instead of returning. It didn't faze Steve. He darted after it, even with HYDRA agents beginning to crowd around him.

Steve knew that he was afraid, but he couldn't feel the fear. Not right now. All he had was his adrenaline, coursing through his serum-saturated blood. He dropped his shoulder and barreled through another enemy, watching as the man skidded across the ground. The circle around him was now three deep, and Steve still didn't have his shield. Without thinking, he took a bounding leap, jumped over the group and tucked and rolled in order to get his shield. He had a clear view of his three teammates stumbling out of Stark tower and sprinted toward them.

Putting his shield on his back, he scooped up a gun that a HYDRA agent had dropped and tossed it toward Tony. "Barton," He ordered, his voice a strong command. "I want you with Romanoff. She's over by the wall. There's a perch, if you can get up there. There's not many of them, but if any manage to get behind us you take them down."

"Got it." Barton said, sliding off to fulfill his command.

The Hulk, overzealous and excited, had already slid behind Steve and was taking out the guys at Steve's back, leaving only Tony. "Stark, your main priority is containment. There's still civilians in the area, some still in the café. Get them out and around the block. The fighting should be fast but that won't mean casualties are low."

Tony didn't even nod, just darted into the crowd of onlookers, pressing his comm. link presumably to have JARVIS send some sort of gadget to help him.

Steve turned around and forged back into the fray.

* * *

Tony felt naked. That was the only word to describe it. He'd never been in a legitimate fight without his suit, and he realized that he'd found a disorienting amount of comfort in having a thick layer of metal between him and his attackers.

Most of the civilians that could've had already fled.

"Sir, there's a rapidly approaching enemy on your left." JARVIS advised, and Tony hardly even looked as he pulled the trigger.

Tony took in his surroundings. Nat and Clint were fighting with their backs to the store front. Bullets tore through the glass, shattering it behind them, but somehow not touching either of them. Cap was fighting them from behind, making the battle like a three front war. There was a large conglomerate of HYDRA agents that were in the center of the street. However, there weren't enough of them to put up much of a fight.

"If you take the path around Mr. Rogers, you can get into the building fairly easily." JARVIS said. "However, I'd stay away from Mr. Banner, as he seems particularly angry today." Tony looked up and found the Hulk roaring and tearing things apart. He hoped Bruce would leave it all on the battlefield.

Tony slid around Cap, who was in the process of punching three guys at one time. (How he did it, Tony had no idea.) He fired his Glock a few times, as per JARVIS' advice, and though he was used to repulsors, he still managed to hit an enemy or two.

He then managed not to die as he crawled through a shattered window and into the café. There were people inside.

Each one was cowering, trembling in complete fear as bullets pounded their way into the drywall inside and the occasional stray agent attempted to get to them. However, they generally ended up with an arrow in their back or a few bullets in their chest, curtesy of the two ex-SHIELD agents.

"Pepper?" Tony called. "_Pepper?"_

He spotted her, cowering in one of the safest spots in the whole café. (He'd have to thank Natasha for that one later.) Knowing she was safe, but unable to charge over there and help her kicked his blood into overdrive, and he managed to get the last few civilians behind the counter and safe from the bullets.

He found Pepper, kissed her on the forehead, and prepared to get back out there.

"Tony!" She yelled. "What are you doing?"

"Helping." He said simply, and ignored her pleas for him to come back as he slid over the counter and back outside.

* * *

Natasha could hold her own pretty well. In fact, she hardly even noticed when Cap joined her in the fight. She was too focused on the sudden swarm of enemies that was closing in on her.

They'd appeared from nowhere.

As Cap went over to give orders to the others, and Hulk began pounding at the strays, she was in hand-to-hand combat with a particularly skilled HYDRA bastard. He managed a swift uppercut that sent her reeling, and she spun out with her stumbling legs and brought him to the concrete. One shot silenced him forever.

Another one advanced on her, though her crowd was thinning as most of them went to go take down the giant green monster and the super soldier. She didn't pause to think about it, just continued to fight.

When she could, she aimed and pressed the trigger, but the gun clicked empty. She cussed in Russian, discarded the gun and advanced on her attacker. She was still wearing light-washed skinny jeans, a white tank top, and her favorite pair of brown flats. Her feet were sweating. So, when she tried to kick out at the man, she lost her balance, and hit the ground.

He was on her a moment later, his fist kissing her cheek with violent force. She struggled for a moment, pushing up against his knees on her hip, distracted by the knuckles sinking into her cheeks. Gaining a little bit of leverage, she put one hand on his chest, lunged with her thumb out, and popped out one of his eyes from its socket. In painful surprise, he loosened his grip, and Natasha managed to find leverage to stand up. As she did, she took his neck with her, snapping it effectively.

She looked up and found herself staring at the end of a black barrel.

For half a millisecond, her heart stopped. And then she sprung at the gun, batting it aside with an open palm. She felt the heat as it fired, but the bullet buried itself in one of the dead men on the ground. She punched the man in the face, one, twice, and then, suddenly, he dropped to the ground.

Natasha spared herself a moment to be confused, but then she saw the blood. And then she saw the black arrow sticking from his neck.

"I had him." She called angrily, already engaging another attacker.

"I know." In the corner of her eye, she saw Clint inspect the area. Cap had probably sent him over here because there was an easy place for him to sit and take people out from above. Apparently, he decided not to, because he took a step near her and strung his bow from there.

As she felled another enemy, she saw Tony dart into the restaurant, obviously on civilian duty.

There was another HYDRA agent fast approaching, and without thinking, she whirled and took an arrow from Clint's quiver. Grasping it like a knife, she plunged it into the oncoming attacker. His eyes widened, and he looked down at the Natasha's hand, which was clutching the end of the arrow. She'd buried it to the hilt. He dropped almost immediately.

She saw movement on her other side, and braced herself from another attack. She was expecting it. What she wasn't expecting was that it was Barton himself.

Before she realized it, he had his bow sideways, pressed into her throat, and her back shoved against the wall. Behind him, Cap and Hulk seemed to have things covered.

"Don't touch my arrows." Clint spat, his voice angry and defensive.

Natasha looked in his eyes and felt her blood boiling. In a series of swift movements, she reached for the gun she knew he kept at his hip, fired it at an oncoming attacker, brought her knee up into Barton's groin, and spun so that he was pressed against the wall. "Don't touch me." She said, but he was already responding, one hand in her hair, pulling her head down, the other at her wrist. He found a pressure point, waited for her to drop the gun, and slammed her into the concrete once more.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" Clint said. Natasha struggled, but they had reached an impasse with each other.

"With me?" She asked, like she had found his statement deeply humorous.

"We're going to have to talk this out sometime." He said, his grip borderline painful in her hair.

"_We _don't have to talk anything out." She said, trying to move the hand trapped against his chest. "_We _don't ever have to talk about anything."

She saw his reaction in his face, though he took careful steps to cover it up. The way his mouth slightly popped open, though it was only a few millimeters, suggested that she'd hurt him somehow. The way that his eyes narrowed suggested that he was reading her, and he'd found his answer.

The crowd of enemies was thinning, the pop of bullets slowly ceasing.

"Get off of me." She requested rudely.

"I—" He began, and then Captain America's voice cut in from behind him. "When you guys are done fighting each other, could you, perhaps, fight HYDRA?"

She didn't have enough time to warn him, and the only noise that escaped her mouth was a slight squeak. From what she saw over Clint's shoulder, there were a few HYRDA agents left, and one of them approached Steve from the back. Steve spun, blocking his attack from that one, but he didn't notice another one on his left.

He did notice, however, when the bullet buried itself into his shoulder. Steve let out a cry. By then Clint had released Natasha, and together the three of them took out the last three men.

But when it was over, Steve stumbled backwards, his hand coming up to cup his shoulder. He cast the two of them a hard look. "What was that?" Steve asked, momentarily reverting his attention from the two feuding spies to his bleeding shoulder.

"Are you ok?" Tony asked from behind, having, apparently, been fighting as well for the past few minutes.

Steve winced. "Bullet went right through. I'll heal." He said, but he definitely didn't look happy.

The Hulk had wondered off, presumably to find some pants, and the only thing left was the four of them and a whole pile of dead bodies.

Natasha looked to Clint's hard eyes. She looked down at the dead man with the arrow in his chest with a muted sense of rage. She looked back to Clint.

And then she sucker-punched him.

"Come on, Steve." She said, stepping away from her groaning partner. "We should look at that wound."

* * *

**AN: Hello people! Thank you for your support! I just finished the very last chapter, and I'm very proud of where the story ends up. Anyway, the next chapter was one of my favorites to write, so stick around :D**

**To my reviewers:**

**carolzocas, fezwearingjellybananas, salwyn77, sailorraven34, and Marvel-comic-girl: Thank you for the review! You guys seriously give me inspiration. The positive comments ****definitely encourage me to keep going. :D**

**Guest reviewers, whomever you may be: You guys rock too. It makes my heart smile.**

**Anyway, see you all Thursday :D Or maybe I can be convinced to post earlier...**


	10. Chapter 10

**Ok, so there's been some confusion as to why Nat and Clint are so pissed at each other. I apologize for this, because apparently I've forgotten to put in certain subtleties or they were altogether too subtle.**

**To begin, Nat saw an inside look at who Clint really was, the proverbial look behind the curtain. Not only did she feel a strange amount of emotion because of it, but she also realized that there was facet of the man that she didn't even know about it. That's what started the tension. Then, as the plot progresses, and each are hit with new nightmares (which are happening even if it's not expressly said) they learn more and more about each other and their teammates. That brings up the past, and the past resentment and fear and emotion that's always been an undercurrent in their relationship. So they have this odd connection to other people and an odd amount of emotion toward them, which is a first for the both of them. Plus, not only are they dealing with all this crap that's coming to the surface, they're also learning more things about _themselves _and the relationship they have. ****Thus, instead of dealing with it, as it is, they lash out. **

**What it all boils down to is fear. They've never really had anything other than each other, and even then they barely had that. And instead of talking about it or opening up to each other, they do underhanded things. Clint purposefully opened up to the group, mostly because it was the right thing for the situation, but it didn't hurt that he knew that there were things in his speech that she didn't know, and he knew how that would make her feel. They're letting their fear and hesitation turn into anger toward one another, as well as themselves. (So of course, said self-anger transforms into even _more _anger toward one another.) Also, it's a lot easier to be mad at the people you know than it is to be mad at a stranger, so that's why they're taking it out on each other and not the rest of the team. Lastly, i****t came to blows for one reason because it creates a contrast in a later part of the plot, but also because they're assassins. They like to beat the crap out of each other.**

**Thank you for bringing it up to me. Y'all are helping me improve with every comment. Keep 'em coming. (Maybe I should have started with a less complicated story line lol) **

**There'll be more of me talking at the bottom, don't worry.**

**(Also, I don't own ANTM. And if you know what that is, get excited)**

* * *

"If you hadn't let your emotions disrupt your work—"

"That's not the point anymore, Natasha."

"—then you wouldn't have gotten Steve shot."

They were in the elevator going up, each Avenger sweaty and grimy and unhappy with one another. Bruce was pulling on the shirt he'd left in the elevator, Steve was clutching his shoulder, and the two spies were already arguing again. Tony and Pepper were still outside, probably quarrelling about Tony's death wish or something.

"If _you _hadn't have been mad at me then Steve wouldn't have got shot!" Clint fired back.

"If you hadn't attacked me in the middle of the battle, then you wouldn't have gotten Steve shot!"

"Did you ever think that maybe Steve got himself shot?" Steve put in from behind them. The two of them turned around, gave him twin glares that screamed _shut up,_ and resumed their arguing about who put Captain America in danger.

* * *

He leaned back. He took in the carnage. He tasted the chaos. It was good.

He'd succeeded so far. He'd thrown them together and torn them apart. He wondered which one would stick. He didn't care. His interest was in the drama; in the way that the world looks right before it comes crashing down. His interest was not in the sympathy, or in the awkwardness, but in the sickness, in the hesitation, in the dark corners and closed doors.

He watched them. He'd placed a finger to their temples and watched their subconscious burn. The blonde one had been fun. He'd dealt with all of his team's emotions with little more than a slight outbreak. That signaled that he was still holding something back.

He wanted them to spill everything. He wanted them all to be raw. But did he want them to fall apart? He didn't know. Didn't care. All he wanted was chaos.

This was little more than a game, an experiment with his powers versus theirs. They didn't know it, but they were in the process of finding out. He didn't care. If they grew stronger, he'd have a worthy opponent. If they grew weaker, he'd take them down easily. This was a win-win. And there was so much pain. It was delicious.

But that was just phase one. And look how they'd handled it. They' fought each other when they should have been fighting someone else. They'd broken apart, cracked like ice in the spring. And even as they were clinging to one another, they were pushing each other away. It was good.

There was more he wanted out of them. Particularly the green one. He'd sent many a nightmare to the monster, but the man had a stable enough mind to bat them away. However, he'd been withdrawing into himself. It would take only a little more, he mused, to push the green one over the edge. In the last play, the Hulk had been nothing more than a supporting character. Now? Now he was the opening act.

Welcome to part two.

* * *

Steve groaned as Natasha slapped the last bandage over the wound. Since it had done quite a bit of damage—the bullet was fired at close range, so not only did it fire through layers of blood and muscle and skin, it had left burn marks on its entry point—it would talk longer than usual to heal. He wasn't worried. Though it was painful, he probably only had about five or six more hours with it.

"Oh, don't be such a baby." Natasha said, clicking the first aid kit shut. She was still fuming, and taking it out on everyone in range.

Steve mentally rolled his eyes and cast a look over the room. Bruce was lying on the couch, his eyes closed. Clint was sprawled in the loveseat, an icepack sitting over his blooming black eye. Tony was slumped against a chair, sitting on the floor. He and Pepper had come up just moments before, and Pepper had stormed into their room. (Was anyone in this tower _not _angry?)

Steve let out a long breath through his nose. "I'm too old for this." He said leaning his head against the drywall and closing his eyes.

Across the room, Tony snorted. "That was almost a good one, Cap."

Steve was too tired to move. "It wasn't a joke." He hadn't felt this tired in a very long time. Not in this century. He supposed that sleeping for seventy years played a part in that, but now he was hardly sleeping and when he was it wasn't much better. "I haven't felt this drained since the war." He said finally. He was conscious of eyes suddenly on him, but he didn't move and he didn't flinch. "The ironic thing was that the fighting wasn't what did it. It was all the publicity stuff I did before I ever got on the battlefield."

"Publicity?" Bruce asked.

A ghost of a smile lit his face. "Haven't you heard? Before Steve Rogers was a hero, he was an actor."

* * *

Natasha had to get the hell out of that room. She felt jumpy, encaged. Her fist hurt and her face was bruising. And once she'd helped Steve out and he'd started talking, she knew she didn't want to hear what he had to say.

She shut the door behind her, listening to the murmurs of the men on the other side for a moment, before crossing her room and blotting them out.

She shed her burned and bloodied clothes and stared at her face in the mirror for a few moments. She'd been told she was beautiful. Even when she was an assassin and there were bruises on her face and blood in her hair, she was still told she was a gorgeous piece of ass. For a long time in her life she'd never been more than that. An object. A means to an end. She looked in the mirror, remembered that she was considered beautiful, and didn't feel it. Natasha turned away and finished undressing.

If nothing else positive could be said about Stark tower, it was that it had really good water pressure. Seriously, the showers were the closest thing to heaven that Natasha would probably get. She turned the water on and waited for it to warm up, and then stepped under the spray.

She jerked the shower curtain into place and felt the steam against her skin. Stepping forward, she let the water pour down her broken body and pound into the knots in her back. She watched as dirt and blood tinged the water brown and then flooded down the drain. For a moment she leaned her head against the cold tile and let the water do its work, and then she grabbed the body wash. It was green apple, a smell that had recently become one of her favorites, oddly enough.

She worked the body wash into a lather over her sore shoulders, and found that her nails were painted. She didn't remember doing it, and she certainly didn't remember asking anyone to paint them such a dark shade of purple. Natasha ignored it, however. There were more important things to worry about.

"Natasha." The very thing she was worried about said, just as she washed the soap off her shoulders.

She jumped violently. Did the man have no boundaries? She'd even locked the door, but Clint was no stranger to a simple lock pick.

"Go away." She said, grateful for the roar of the water. She felt exposed. After all, the shower was the one place where she was truly alone, and she let herself be.

"When you're all hot and naked?" His voice was ice, like he was trying to hurt her. "Not likely." Suddenly, the shower curtain was opening and he was stepping in with her.

She fought down a shriek, embarrassed and frozen. And then she was throwing an elbow into his neck and slamming him against the shower wall. She pressed her eyes shut, and when she opened them?

When she opened them he was gone.

She was completely alone, her chest heaving, the shower still pouring out hot water. There was still soap on her shoulders and her nails had no paint.

She was alone but she felt raw. For the first time in a very, very long time, tears pricked her eyes. She shrugged them away, but even as they dissipated, she still felt the tightness in her chest from the embarrassment. Not only did she feel exposed. In some odd twist of events, she felt _terrified_.

And then the memory came back. She hadn't even known it was there. For a moment, she was back under the Red Room's evil hand, and she was with a guy in the shower…and then she wasn't. Then she was only with his blood, his lifeless body in the water and a feeling her chest that felt a lot like an air bubble, ready to burst.

* * *

"_Imogen, you are no longer in the running to become America's Next Top Model…_" Tyra Banks was saying on the flat-screen TV that hung in the room.

"What?" Tony gasped, lifting his head a little higher. "Not Imogen!"

Bruce rolled his eyes. "She was the obvious choice. Can't you see her bone structure?"

"Her nostrils were too flared in that picture," Clint added, "Everyone knows that camera angle gives you flared nostrils."

"Plus no one can really pull off that purse this time of year." Tony agreed, letting his head return to its original position against Bruce's arm. Tony was on the floor and Bruce was on the couch above him.

"Or that color. I mean purple? With her skin tone? Give me a break." Bruce replied. "What do you think, Steve?"

Steve was leaning forward in his chair, watching the show intently. "I think I've lost a lot of faith in humanity." He said, watching as the scorned model burst into tears while hugging a sad Tyra Banks. Her photo flashed on the screen again, the one that she'd been booted off the TV show for.

"Not about the show, about the picture." Clint corrected, still in the same position that he had been in for the last half an hour. After Natasha had left, they'd all collectively decided to help Steve get acclimated to the world of reality television. It was pure luck that Clint's favorite one was currently having a marathon.

"What? Oh." Steve squinted at the screen, as a tearful Imogen packed her things. "It was pretty, I guess."

"Pretty?" Bruce scoffed, while Tony heaved a faux sigh.

Clint rolled his eyes. "God, Steve, don't you know anything about modeling?"

They all shifted so that they could look at Steve while using the least amount of energy possible. He pulled his eyes from the show and look briefly at the three other men in the room.

"No." Steve deadpanned.

Clint couldn't keep the giggle in, though when he let it out it hurt his ribs. He didn't remember getting hit in the stomach, but he'd also been hit in the head really hard. For no apparent reason. _She'd _been the one to touch _his _arrows. And those were the only weapon that was, and always had been, expressly his. He was the marksman, the sharpshooter. The great Hawkeye, the kid with the aim. He hated, hated, _hated _it when anyone touched his stuff. So he may have overreacted. So what? That didn't mean she got to try to break his nose. He was mad at her mostly because she was mad at him. It was a vicious circle, but he didn't really mind continuing it. It's not like he'd done anything wrong.

"I think you do." Tony made a chuckling noise from the floor and then reached for the see-through tablet thingy that controlled a lot of stuff in the tower and that Clint didn't have the proper name for. He tapped on it for a few moments as the TV began to blend into commercials, and then suddenly spoke up. "JARVIS, broadcast these pictures onto the screen."

It might have been the concussion, but Clint though he heard a sigh in the AI's voice as he responded. "As you wish, sir."

What Clint saw when he looked up was priceless. They were old pictures, but they were sepia-tinged beauties. There was Steve in his spangly outfit, girls line-dancing behind him. There was Steve with a goofy grin on his face as he addressed a crowd. Steve with a twisted face as he knocked out Hitler. A still of Captain America in a movie, marching through a very fake forest with a very fake look of determination on his face.

Clint actually sat up. "Dear Lord." He said in awe. Cap was probably going to regret telling them about his acting days.

Steve holding a baby. Steve shaking hands with some guy with a ridiculous mustache. Steve with a fake American flag background in a picture that was probably meant to look artsy, but ended up looking laughable.

Behind him, Tony and Bruce were snickering as Tony scrolled through picture after picture of post-serum, pre-war Steve. They stopped, abruptly, and Clint looked around to see Steve and Tony fighting over the clear tablet, both of them giggling like school boys. Clint inwardly smiled that Steve didn't seem to be mad at all. Instead he seemed refreshingly…normal.

Steve eventually won out, putting one hand on Tony's head and holding him back as he used the other hand to hold the electronic aloft. "JARVIS," Steve ordered around a heavy, chest-shaking laugh, "Pull up the video of Tony's first flight with his Iron Man technology." Steve paused and then continued. "And then play it on the screen."

"Very well, Mr. Rogers."

There was a still silence as the video began to play. A young looking Tony was wearing metal hands and feet, and rambling about something. He ordered Dummy to be on fire-duty, told JARVIS to put the power at 10%, and then counted down from three.

Immediately, he flipped backwards and hit the ceiling, only to land and then drown in white foam as Dummy tried to extinguish the "fire".

Clint didn't know which was funnier, Steve's pictures or that video. Apparently, neither did his teammates, because they all were laughing just as hard at Tony as they were at Steve.

"Have you been talking to Rhodey?" Tony was asking in indignation, though his tone had a thinly veiled quality of amusement.

"We should put that on The Youtube." Steve gasped.

Clint turned back around to give Steve a look, "The Youtube? Dude, seriously?" He asked, but then, feeling eyes on him, he rolled to his feet.

Fresh from the shower, Natasha was staring at them, her face serious. She grimaced. "We have a problem."

* * *

**AN: Raise your hand if you're ready for some Bruce action! I know I am. Any predictions? **

**Anyway, I liked writing this chapter because not only was it a transition chapter that allowed me to shift toward a new direction, but there was also a little bit of fluff paralleled with the angst. And the Iron Man reference was from the first movie, where it looks like its a home video when he first tries out flight.**

**Also, you should go check out my other fic I just posted. I promise you won't be disapointed. :D**

**Anyway, thanks always for your support and your reviews ;D**

**And with that, I'm going to bed. (I have freaking school in the morning, can you believe that?)**


	11. Chapter 11

**Read this one carefully, as the line between reality and fantasy is pretty blurry.**

**Warnings for language, as angry people like to cuss. **

**Also, for the next two chapters I listened to "My Kind of Love" by Emili Sande over and over. Either the remix or the original, both gave me chills and inspiration.**

* * *

_My dad can beat up your dad_.

The dark haired boy across the table had taunted him with those words at recess the previous day. He had been throwing mulch, and then abruptly broke into his favorite insult.

Bruce had no response. _So what if your dad could beat up my dad? My dad could beat up your dad, and you, and then me for the hell of it, and that's really the part that matters._ He'd been angry at the boy, but he hadn't said a word, and he hadn't retaliated.

But now was a different story. Now the boy and his family were sitting at the table with him, and all Bruce wanted to do was pound that kid's face in. He couldn't, though. His father had warned him and his mother before dinner to _act right_. The _or else_ in his words wasn't spoken, but it didn't have to be. It never did.

Now the dark-haired boy spoke up again, his tone mean and obnoxious, "And what do you think of _that_, Bruce?"

Bruce took a deep breath in, trying to control his anger, and then he blinked. He was still sitting at an awkward dinner with his broken family, but it was a different family. Tony was looking at him expectantly, Steve and Clint were both pushing food around their plate, and Natasha had a glazed look and an untouched dinner.

"What do you think, Bruce?" Tony repeated.

"What?" Bruce finally asked, his voice coming out wrong.

Tony rolled his eyes, "Not paying attention again? Figures. I asked you what you thought of the whole HYDRA thing." Tony squinted, and realized that Bruce was still not getting it. "Natasha pointed out that their numbers were small, so they obviously didn't expect the Avengers to show up. We think the attack was to prove a point. They were going to slaughter a bunch of people right under my nose."

"Oh." Bruce replied. "Yeah. That sounds right."

To his left, his mother was looking at him worriedly. "It'll be ok, Bruce." She said in her soft voice. Bruce knew that it wouldn't, and he knew that she was lying, but he couldn't help but find comfort in her fine features and soothing voice. He loved his mother a lot, because she was his rock, the only thing stable thing that kept him afloat.

On his other side, his father sat, loud, sarcastic, and already drunk. The adults at the table were talking about politics or something, and Bruce was too young to understand. He only had the dark-haired boy to look at, but the boy kept sticking his tongue out at him. So, he ended up just looking at his plate and pretending he was hungry.

His legs weren't long enough to touch the ground, so he found himself swinging them back and forth. It was a nice distraction from the anger at the dark haired boy, who had apparently learned how to use one of his fingers to convey his emotions. He squinted the tears away and swung his legs harder and harder, his fingers clutching the side of his chair with strength he didn't know he had.

His father had gotten up to get some water. Bruce accidentally kicked him when he sat down. He looked up, and the promise of a later beating was already stiffening his father's muscles, coloring his gaze red. "Sorry." Bruce squeaked, though the damage was already done.

"For what? I bumped into _you_." Clint muttered back, regaining his balance and getting settled in his chair. He set his water glass down and relaxed, not sparing Bruce another glance.

"Bruce." On his left, Steve was trying to get his attention in a soft voice. "Are you ok?"

He hesitated, feeling utterly overwhelmed. Across the table, Natasha and Tony were deep in conversation. It was a discussion that Bruce had a weird feeling had already happened, they were just rehashing the details. Bruce caught a few words of it, "…waking subconscious…"

"…buried memories…"

"…teammates"

Now that he thought about it, he recalled having this conversation, though vaguely. Natasha had had some sort of vivid hallucination, though she wouldn't tell the details. She'd suggested that the attacks had shifted from having someone elses' nightmares, to having someone else involved in your own daydream. Stark had tried to be funny and called them daymares.

"Dreams…"

The conversation abruptly stopped, and the dark haired boy and his mother turned to the table, "Isn't my boy just _wonderful_?" His mother cooed, fixing a strand of that dark, dark hair behind her son's ear. "So smart. He's first in his class."

"Bruce is second." His father grumbled, and Bruce knew that the coming beating had just intensified. The dark haired boy shot him a smug look, like he knew that he was going to cause Bruce pain. He knew that his father probably couldn't beat up Bruce's father, and he just didn't care.

Bruce wanted to kill the dark haired boy

Who the hell did he think he was? Bruce and his mother were struggling, in pain, alone. And the dark haired boy could only laugh. Everything was a joke, wasn't it? Bruce wanted to see if he'd be laughing as Bruce ripped his throat out.

"It'll be ok," His mother said, again. Bruce turned to tell her it wouldn't be, only to find Steve looking at him with a worried expression. "Are you ok?" he asked in a way that made Bruce feel like this wasn't the first time Steve asked it.

Bruce grunted, half of him trying to push his anger down, the other half begging him to give in.

He looked at Steve harshly, and hated him. Why had the serum worked for him? The no-good, American pie jackass got jacked up on the stuff only to waist it away in self-pity. He got his friend killed. Whatever. Bruce had _wanted _that serum, wanted it so damn badly. And he saw it every day, walking around inside a man who didn't appreciate it. Who could only feel sorry for himself and have haunting nightmares about the war.

"Bruce…" Steve warned, bringing him back to himself. He was being irrational, and he knew it. The serum was fitting for Steve. He couldn't have imagined a better man for it.

He glanced up, trying to calm himself, only to be thrown back into the anger again. They were all looking at him, worried. Not worried for him. Worried for themselves. They were looking through him, only comprehending how his features were turning green. They knew nothing about him past his "breathtaking anger issues." They didn't know about Betty or Calcutta or his goddamned father or that goddamned explosion that caused all this hurt.

This was a fucking joke. All of it. And they were fooling themselves.

He wanted to prove to them that. He wanted to let his anger take him. And then he wanted to paint this building red with their blood. The blood of the people who called him a friend, but then did little but ignore him.

"Hey, buddy." Tony said, his voice frozen with fear and apprehension, when just a moment before he'd been an all-grown-up version of the dark haired boy.

Like that asshole had any room to talk. He used to spend his nights either doing the nearest doable girl or wallowing in self-pity. Now that he was in a committed relationship (but let's be honest, how long is that going to last?) he only had the self-pity. And the nightmares. And the panic attacks. All the man could do was worry and panic and act like a pathetic little bitch. He'd finally taken one for the team and acted like the hero. And then he spent all his time complaining about it.

"Bruce." Natasha said, her voice like a life vest when he was so close to drowning. He had to get a lid on it. The only way he could control the Hulk is when he controlled the transformation. Hadn't he just learned that in The Battle of Manhattan? None of these people were deserving of that. This was a good team. This, as he'd said before, was his family.

But it was just as broken as his last one.

He tried to think happy thoughts. The team bonding. The drunk games, the movie. The three episodes of _ANTM _they'd watched.

But then he was thinking about how his favorite model had been voted off, and then he was looking at Natasha and hating every atom that she was composed of. He groaned again, trying to press down his panicked anger, trying with all he had to be Dr. Banner and not be The Other Guy. His fingers were growing, and they were suddenly too heavy to lift. His clothes made ripping sounds as they stretched.

"Bruce, please." Clint said, and Bruce turned to see his father.

For a split second, the anger disappeared. And then there was only the pain. He felt like he'd been carved out with an ice cream scoop, and his guts were on the floor. He was empty and afraid and alone. Tears he didn't know he even had found themselves dripping from his eyes, tracing down his burning, green face. His lips curled, even as they turned. "_I just want to go home_." He said, and in that moment, he wasn't Dr. Banner and he wasn't the Hulk. He was just a little boy who'd been taunted by the dark-haired bully.

But there was no home.

And then he was turning, his clothes ripping, his subconscious draining, until there was only the anger and a world that was completely green.

* * *

**I should stop with the cliffhangers, shouldn't I? *evil laughter* Maybe some reviews would make the next chapter come faster...? (I feel weird saying that)**

**Also, you should go check out my other fic which is Natasha whump. And you should review there, too. *more evil laughter***

**See you next chapter, which hopefully will be soon. **

**By the way, I got Chinese food the other day, and there was this guy behind me who literally roared when he got his food. Either he was about to hulk out or he was really happy to get his plate of 5.99 Sesame Chicken. **

**Ok. Now I'm really done. **


	12. Chapter 12

**AN: Helloooooooo again. Sorry for the wait. With the sudden onslaught of school/work/homework/an unexpected social life (I know, right?!) I've been super busy. Also, I tried to post this last night and it seems it didn't work all that well? I(Second time's the charm) Anyway, here you are. This one goes out to Rhyan, who when I showed _Avengers _to her, spent the whole movie waiting for a certain two words from the Hulk. **

**Lastly, the chemistry in this chapter is correct, but the civil engineering and the biology/anatomy I pulled right out of my ass (haha. See if you can get the pun I just made)**

* * *

"Shit." Tony said, standing up from the table, backing up slowly. He watched as his friend disappeared beneath the folds of a monster.

"Stark, where are you going?" Natasha cried after him as his legs slowly picked up the pace.

He gestured down his body. "Just a human. Nothing I can do to help." He replied, his fingers finding the door to the stairs as he backed into the wall. "Well, have fun." He replied. "Try to get him in the stairwell. We just, you know, cleaned the place up." Tony stuttered and then opened the door and disappeared through it.

Once he was clear, he started sprinting, up the stairs, into the penthouse of the building. "Pepper!" He shouted. She was still mad at him, because even though he gave up being Iron Man, it didn't mean that he really had given it up. He _was _Iron Man, suit or no suit, and that was something that a lot of people didn't understand. And she hadn't, not when he'd jumped back into the battle with HYDRA this morning.

"Not in the mood, Tony." She said, sitting at her desk and typing something.

"Well you're about to be." He said, crossing the room quickly and pulling her up. She gave him a look that mellowed when she saw the panic in his eyes.

"What—" She began, only to be interrupted by an animalistic roar, signaling that Bruce had completed his transformation.

"Bruce hulked out." Tony said, like the roar needed any explanation whatsoever. (It didn't.)

"Hulked out?" Pepper asked feebly, asking probably about his word choice rather than the situation.

Tony began to pull her to the elevator. "Yeah, you know, big green rage monster? Gamma ray accident? Come on. We need to get downstairs."

He saw it in her eyes when it clicked. "The lab." She gasped as the elevator dinged. "Should we really be taking the elevator?"

"Yes." He said decisively. "Hulk's taking the stairs. He's on weight watchers, you know."

She hit him in the arm. "Tony."

"I know, I know." He said, impatiently stabbing the buttons again. There was quick silence, interrupted only by another feral call reverberating through the building.

The elevator opened painfully slowly, and the two of them rushed out of it and into the lab. On one computer, the algorithm Tony and Banner had developed continued to buzz as it searched and decrypted any document that existed ever on SHIELD's secure server.

"JARVIS, pull up Banner's Plan B." Tony ordered, reaching an unused PC and firing it up.

"But sir, those are on his own server, and—"

"JARVIS, who programmed you to get smart with me? Get it done." Tony ordered, tapping his fingers as the screen began to turn on. He winced, listening to the chaos above. "Pepper!" He called, suddenly, causing her to jump. She'd evidently thought that he'd taken her down here solely for her protection. "Man this computer. Once I've hacked into Banner's files they'll be on this screen."

He then moved to a black lab table and darted to a chemical cabinet. Banner was always creating back-up plans, because he was always afraid he'd lose it and hurt someone. Tony had told him that he was being ridiculous, but Tony hadn't predicted that they'd have a lunatic maniac ultra-lord in their heads.

The two of them worked together on and off. Actually, Bruce and Tony had become quite close in the past few months. After the Battle of Manhattan, Tony convinced Bruce to stay in New York instead of crawling back into whatever hole he'd come out of. The way he convinced him was primarily with the toys (he had a freaking SEM microscope. What's cooler than that?), but the secondary way he got Bruce to stay was with the friendship.

Tony procured an industrialized glass bottle labeled _12 M NaOH_, and set it, none too gently, on the black lab table. He did the same with a similar bottle labeled _12 M HCl_. Then, he grabbed the nearest graduated cylinder without even wondering if it was clean or not. "JARVIS, hurry up, would you?" He ordered, measuring out equal amounts of both chemicals and pouring them into separate beakers. He then bolted to a different cabinet and procured a baggie full of three syringes. They had specialized titanium needles that could break the Hulk's skin.

Then, he drew the hydrochloric acid into one syringe, and the sodium hydroxide into the other. Quickly, he labeled them, and sprinted over to the computer.

He set them down beside Pepper's hand and leaned over her, watching as the files slowly loaded onto the screen. As his eyes flicked through the incoming documents, her hands found the syringes.

"Tony? Why do you have a vile full of concentrated hydrochloric acid?" She asked, worried.

"To inject into Banner." He was already distracted, clicking through files, trying to find the one that he knew was there.

"But that could kill him, wouldn't it?" She picked up the syringe. "That's like, the strongest acid there is. It would melt the skin off his bones."

"It would kill Banner, but not the Hulk." He said, having found the diagram he needed.

He leaned back, scooping up both syringes. "OK, so in my left hand I have hydrochloric acid, and in the right I got sodium hydroxide." He wiggled his left hand. "Strong acid." He wiggled his right hand. "Strong base."

No comprehension crossed her face, and he sighed, gesturing to the diagram. "They're equal volumes, equal molarity, which means equimolar. What that means is that they can be completely neutralized in one another, reaching an easy, safe equilibrium pH of seven." He paused. "They make salt water. Perfectly harmless.

"Right, so this one goes in his arm," he said, gesturing with the HCL to the diagram, "and this one goes in his ass." He gestured with the NaOH now. "They go into the blood stream as the evil chemicals that they are, and when they meet they react and become water."

"I understand that," She said, "But why?"

"Blood is a solution called a buffer, which basically means that it's resistant to change on the pH scale, so not only will it help the solutions to react, but the blood itself won't be changed. Thus it's a fairly safe way for the Hulk to feel pain, which grounds him as a human. If Bruce feels pain, he feels himself, and can potentially take control of the Other Guy to change back." He pressed a few buttons on the keyboard, and a few paces to his right the printer started making noises. "The key is to get the solutions to meet before they reach the heart. That's what the diagram is for. If they don't get to his heart, the worst thing that happens to Bruce is some internal bleeding, depending on the strength of the Hulk's veins. If they do…" He trailed off, walking over to wait by the printer. "There could be permanent damage." He said, "So, uh, do me a favor and memorize this, won't you?" He said, pulling the diagram that instructed where the injection site should be.

Pepper looked down at it, her face paling. "Have you guys tested this? Do you even know if it'll work?"

"Nope." Tony replied, peering over his shoulder. The diagram was a rough sketch, at best. There was an outline of the Hulk to scale with what Bruce assumed to be his measurements and two feeble marks of where to inject and find a vein.

"But what about the rate of reaction? Blood flow? What if…?" Tony threw Pepper a sharp look. "I don't know." He said his voice a tight shout. The silence that sunk into their skin afterword was thundering. "I don't know, Pepper." He repeated, committing the diagram to memory and shoving it in his back pocket. He looked down at the syringes in his hand, full of some of the deadliest stuff on earth. "You're just going to have to have some blind faith in me."

She looked up incredulously. "Blind faith in Tony Stark."

"Hey, I saved the world once." He replied, handing her a syringe full of sodium hydroxide.

"Once."

"Better than you could say." Tony said, allowing a small smile to appear on his face. It was quickly wiped away by the sound of cracking concrete in the stairwell above them. "You got the ass one." He pushed the door to the lab open. "And don't be a millimeter off, got it?"

"But—"

"You seriously can't expect me to do all the hereoing myself, Peps. They need to be injected at the same time." He looked at her, his face portraying a look of excitement, though that was far from what he felt. "Come on. It'll be fun. I promise."

* * *

Steve was stunned. He barely even registered when Tony left with the parting remarks of "_Well, have fun." _He couldn't pry his eyes away from the transformation. He watched as the Hulk split from Bruce's skin just as easily as it burst from Bruce's clothes. He'd never seen Bruce transform, and it looked painful. Painful and terrifying, because what stood in the place that Banner had been standing was definitely not a friendly.

Nor was it happy.

Steve had stood in frozen fear for too long, and Bru—The Hulk's hand shot out and backhanded him across the room. A regular human would have been killed by the blow itself, let alone the impact with the wall. Steve blew through the drywall headfirst, his shoulder wound splitting open. He landed in his own bedroom and in his own bed. He leaned over, spit out a deadly mixture of wall and dust from his throbbing mouth and made an attempt to stand up.

Suddenly everything on his body hurt. His chest was caving in and his back felt shattered, but he stumbled back into the common room, shield in tow, ready for round two.

As per Tony's suggestion, Barton and Romanoff were drawing the beast into the stairwell. It made sense. The concrete was thick in there, and the tower wouldn't suffer any significant structural damage if he, for example, tore through the wall or broke a stair or two. It minimized the damage to the rest of the tower, as well. (Though it was much too late for Steve's room.)

Steve sprinted after them. Barton and Romanoff disappeared through the door, but the Hulk simply walked through the wall.

Sensing his presence, the Hulk turned around and made a swing at him again. Steve had learned his lesson, and jumped back. Hopefully Tony was developing a plan, because Steve hadn't the faintest clue how to take the Hulk down. The only thing he could do was attempt to make the man inside see reason.

"Banner!" he shouted just after his green fist had narrowly missed him.

The Hulk roared and pounded his closed fist downward. Steve crouched low, holding his shield aloft. The vibranium absorbed most of the punch, but shockwaves spread through his arms and to his feet. He fell backwards. Steve wasn't strong enough. He looked around to the other two agents. They weren't strong enough either. Hell, they were only human. They were sorely outmatched. He supposed the three of them served as a distraction as Stark thought up some genius way to get Banner to see sense again. Until then?

They were the flies, and Bruce was the big, green swatter.

"Bruce! I know you're in there!" Steve shouted again, as Natasha scrambled up the steps. He watched in horror as she launched herself on the Hulk's shoulders. He roared and bucked, grasping at her with meaty fists.

"Bruce. Come on, Bruce." Natasha said into his ear. Apparently she'd drawn the same conclusion that Steve had.

"We're here for you." Clint called at his feet. The Hulk kicked out, and Clint slid between his legs last minute. "Whatever you're mad about, you don't have to go through it alone."

With his words, the Hulk let out another titanic roar and finally got ahold of the spider on his shoulders. He tore her from his neck and threw her down the stairs.

Steve didn't think. He planted one foot on the wall and dove down the stairs. For a moment he felt like he was flying, but then Natasha was in his arms and his head was hitting the concrete steps. His grip tightened on her and he rolled to the side, stopping his momentum and saving her from hitting the stairs, too. He slid on his back until he shot out an arm and was finally able to stop himself.

"Steve." Her breath was hot in her ear. "Steve?"

His vision was currently 100% black, so he waited half a second for it to clear. "'S fine." He grunted, letting Natasha go. She rolled off him and darted back up the steps to reengage. He gave himself two more seconds to lay there in his pain. Then he got up, using the walls for support, and followed her lead.

* * *

Clint watched in abject terror as Natasha was flung through the air. He froze, momentarily as he watched what he knew to be the last moments of her life. But then there was a flash and Steve was there, catching her in the air and landing on his back, effectively cushioning her fall.

He breathed out a sigh of relief. He was mad at her, sure, but he was definitely planning on getting over his anger at some point. She'd have to be alive for that to happen.

He reverted his attention back to the Hulk, who was currently lacking enemies other than him, and was currently advancing.

Clint danced up the stairs. "I'm not going to fight a teammate." He ducked as the Hulk swung out. Having missed, his anger intensified. He stomped his foot and the stairs shuddered underneath him.

The Hulk glanced down at the stairs and then up at Clint. "_Hulk…smash…" _he shouted in the deep, throaty voice of his, and then brought both of his fists down on the stairs.

They shuddered, cracking under the momentum. Clint thought they were going to hold.

They didn't.

He was falling, then, falling down to the flight of stairs below. Concrete and plaster rained down next to him. He flung out an arm, hoping to catch the landing and save his own life. But he only managed to make things worse. Instead of landing on the steps a story below the one he'd been standing on, Clint now was falling in the square gap between the steps. No longer was he falling one flight. Now he was falling eighty four.

He was just about to accept his fate and start screaming when a familiar hand shot out and stopped him. Clint looked up.

Dangling from the rail with one hand, Steve had swung out and grabbed the collar of Clint's jacket with the other.

They both swung innocently in the air for a few moments, before Steve groaned. "What the hell is wrong with the two of you?" He asked, but there was an odd amount of laughter in his voice.

Clint was laughing, too, but only because he was still alive. He swung to take Cap's hand. "No respect for our own lives?"

"I'll say." Steve said, screwing his eyes shut. With a grunt, he began pulling Clint up. He first used the arm on the rail to pull the both of them up, which he did fairly easily. Once Steve swung himself over the rail, he pulled harder at Clint. This process was oddly more taxing on the super shoulder, who grunted heavily, every muscle clenching.

Clint soon found out why. Once Clint reached the rail and was using his own strength to lodge himself over, he saw the warm scarlet circle on Cap's shoulder. His bullet wound had probably reopened, though when, Clint wasn't sure.

They both tripped up the stairs, back to the landing on which they'd first entered where Natasha was currently fighting the Hulk.

* * *

Bruce tried to stop himself. But he was trapped.

He was watching a movie in which he was a main character. The whole scene had been scripted and produced and edited and then put into a movie. Bruce had no power of what would happen next. The goodness inside of him could only watch as his anger was made manifest.

Maybe it was less like a movie and more like there were two of him. One watching the movie and the other directing it. One sitting in the dark, horrified. The other wondering what blood tasted like.

He participated as he tossed Natasha down the stairs. He watched as Steve dove underneath her and absorbed the fall with his head. He was present when the Hulk broke the concrete underneath Clint.

He managed to stop himself, if only for a second, and watch as Clint fell. His heart had immediately jumped into his throat, and his only thought was _no_. He didn't want to kill any of them.

And then Cap came to the rescue, and he resumed wanting to kill _all _of them.

They were all good-for-nothing show-offs, anyway. Puny humans that he could snuff out like a match. They were little more than annoyances.

He was the Hulk, through and through. The good guy, Banner, could only drown in the darkness; quietly resist what his own body was doing.

It was confusing, being the Hulk. Every emotion bled together and intensified until it became anger. Every thought, good or bad, was squashed by the rage. No matter how much he resisted, he was too angry to care that his own subconscious was telling him no.

He turned and found all three of them, the soldier, the Hawk and the Spider, all in a neat little line, all ready to annoy him some more.

He was ready.

* * *

"What do we do?" Clint asked, dodging a punch.

Steve was conscious of two worried looks being cast his way. How long had they been fighting? Ten minutes? Five? He shook the fuzz from his brain and charged forward, deflecting a punch with his shield and landing one blow in the green guy's stomach. It did little.

"I don't know." Natasha called back. "Bruce. Banner, you have to listen to us. We know you're in there."

"It won't work." A shout from below had the three of them briefly glancing behind them. Tony and Pepper were coming up the stairs. Pepper looked positively terrified, and Tony didn't look much different.

"Well you better have something. Cap's fading out here." Natasha said.

Steve turned to Clint. "Am not."

"Are too." Clint returned, just as the Hulk gave another roar and began to beat at his chest like he was Tarzan.

He took one, ground-shattering step toward them, and the three fighters collectively took a step back. He was about to take another, but the ground shuddered before he even put his green, size 25 down. It was a more metallic than organic thud, however.

Steve peered around the Hulk, and began to think he was having a very convenient hallucination.

The one thing that could potentially take down the Hulk, the Asgardian god of lightning and Thursdays, stood decked in full battle armor, Mjölnir at his feet.

"Banner!" A thundering, accented voice boomed. There was threat in his voice, but there was also warmth. "Brother!" He said.

The Hulk froze.

And turned around.

"Now!" Tony yelled, and both he and Pepper dashed up the stairs. While the Hulk stood dumbfounded, Tony slid around him, and both he and Pepper stabbed syringes into his gamma thickened skin.

He dropped immediately with a snarl of unabashed pain. His hands went to his head, and he rolled backwards, his bellowing deepening and then becoming more and more humanoid. He dropped one hand from his head, and by the time it hit the ground it was Banner's. He bit out a half-scream, half howl as the green drained from his body.

Everyone watched in horrified sympathy as his screams became whimpers, and the whimpers faded into silence. And then they met each-other's eyes when, abruptly, the silence itself became louder than anything the Hulk could roar.

* * *

**Sooooooooooo there's only one more ending that I'd consider a cliffhanger in this fic. I do have some evil, evil plans though. Don't you worry. See you (hopefully) this weekend.**


	13. Chapter 13

**I'll talk for a really long time at the bottom, but as for now, I only have one (really long) word for you:**

**THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR**

* * *

Midgard needed help.

Every time Thor came down from Asgard, it seemed something else was wrong with that particular world. Earthquakes. Chitauri invasions. Even Sharknados, whatever those were.

He hadn't even spent five minutes relaxing on Jane's couch before there was a breaking news alert, broadcasting another battle in New York involving his new friends. It had been Jane's suggestion for him to go, and not seeing any other choice, he found his way into the newly refurbished Stark towers, in which all hell had broken loose.

Yes, Midgard needed help.

Now, he and his fellow Avengers were scattered throughout the common room, crowded around a shaking Bruce, who was covered in a gray fleece blanket, eating cherries and coughing out apologies with the pits. Thor was confused, to say the least. Stark had given him the rundown—that the HYDRA attack was to prove a point now that SHIELD was gone, and that the main problem was that someone powerful had been giving them terrible nightmares, nightmares which seemed to be evolving, though Thor hadn't the faintest idea of what a Day-mare was, or whatever Stark had said.

"I just—" Bruce was saying, his head bowed in apparent embarrassment, "I'm so sorry, I should've…"

"Bruce," Natasha was sitting on the barstool next to him. She put a hand on his shaking, blanket-covered shoulder. "Just tell us what happened. What did you see that made you lose control?"

Apparently, she'd said something wrong, because Bruce ducked his head lower, tears fogging his cracked glasses.

"On Asgard, we are warriors." Thor cut in, his voice quiet but still powerful. Each person jumped, like they'd already forgotten he was there. "But we mourn together. In battle we must persevere, but we are not strangers to emotions. You are with friends, Banner. We will mourn together."

Bruce looked up, finally able to meet Thor's eyes. He pressed his lips together, probably holding in a sob, and nodded.

"Cutting through all that Shakespearean crap," Tony said, his words joking but his tone far from it, "We're here for you, Bruce. You don't have to suffer this alone, but you've got to open up about it."

Bruce lifted another cherry, sliding his thumb around its shiny pink surface. "You know what the worst part about transforming is?" He started in a small voice, rolling the small piece of fruit between his fingers. "The gum pain. It's the part that lingers the longest when I turn back. Cold cherries are the only thing I've found that helps." He put the cherry down, hugging the blanket tighter around himself. Bruce looked up sharply, and found Thor's eyes. "I heard you, you know." He began, "You called me your brother."

Thor nodded. "We are brothers borne of blood, Banner. You were willing to fight and die with me. There is honor in your goodness." He did not talk about the brother he had that was willing to fight and die for the other side.

"Yeah, well, I've never had a brother. Never really had a family. Not until now." Bruce took a ragged gasp in. "All that's ever really been constant in my life is anger."

They waited. He didn't elaborate. He hadn't dropped the eye contact with Thor, and Thor took that as his chance to get through to Banner. Even though Thor had only been in this tower for a short while, he still felt a wavering connection between the people he was with.

"I am no stranger to broken families," Thor said dryly, letting everyone sink into their memories for a split second. _We were raised together, we played together, we fought together. Do you remember none of that? _"I find it best to find family in the ones whom I chose."

Thor found it ridiculous that Midgardian society regulated that in order for a man to be strong, he must be stoic. Everyone feels emotions, and everyone has scars. But each scar is a story, each wound physical proof that one can survive. There is nothing to be ashamed of for mourning for a brother whom, though died very recently, you lost a long time ago. There is no shame in loving a woman so openly. Arguably, emotions are what drive your life-force. Love and pain and hate and anguish have insurmountable effects on you. Why must all Midgardian men pretend that they have none of that?

It was because of this stigma that his friends were in this whole mess.

Thor continued, hoping that his openness would serve as an example. "We do not judge you, Bruce, for being who you are. We do not judge you for your past, as each of our pasts are quite possibly as just as flawed."

"Yeah. Even Spandex over there is just as mental as I am." Tony said, drawing a half-hearted glare from Steve, though he returned his head to his hands quickly. "We're like, the Rugrats, or…the Breakfast Club."

Steve lifted his head again, this time to give Tony a confused look. "But it's not breakfast time."

Thor's look mirrored Steve's. "Is it not customary to eat breakfast in the Midgardian morning?"

"Both of you turds need to learn how to twenty-first century." Tony said, exasperated. Thor was not sure, but he thought that 'twenty-first century' was not a verb, and thus the sentence was incomplete. He let the subject drop, though, in fear of falling even further into social disgrace.

"What those idiots are _trying_ to say," Clint rolled his eyes, popping one of the cherries into his mouth, "Is that in an alternative universe, we wouldn't be Avengers, we'd be the leaders of the Screwed Up Childhood club."

Bruce snorted, "Well, if we were all in that club, then you and I would be the ones making the buttons for child abuse." He said it so dryly, so callously full of anger,m that everyone in the room froze, especially Clint, Thor noted, who paused his chewing and eyes grew wide. "That's what I was seeing, at dinner. My dad. And so I, you know…" He trailed off, and Thor could draw the conclusions. Now that Bruce had the power to be angry with his father, he was furious. That kind of rage you couldn't control.

"I get it." Clint said softly, "Believe me. If I saw my father again, I'd want to Hulk out, too."

There was a bucketful of silence, in which the only sound in the tower was the inhale and exhale coming from chests with broken hearts. "I'm so sorry." Bruce said, dropping his eyes from Thor's and looking across the table to Steve. "Are you ok?"

Steve grunted. "What? Yeah. I'm fine." He said, but his voice was weary. "Just tired, is all."

Thor looked around, and saw that his fellow Avengers all were the picture of exhaustion. They all looked worn out and beaten up, but, there was still a certain kind of buzzing in the air, the feeling of the sky before a storm. It was tenuous, but it was there, the wild electricity of a connection, the strength of a group that was meant to be. Like the others felt it too, they all looked up from their various slumped positions, each tired eye wondering what the hell they were going to do next.

"So what now?" Clint said, finally voicing everyone's concern.

Bruce looked at him sharply. "Is that it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're not…mad? Disappointed?" He shrunk back.

"What? Of course not. You were just letting off steam," Clint shrugged, eating another cherry. "Steve does it by strangling Tony, you do it by turning green. No biggie." He said around a mouthful. Thor didn't know how the man was still hungry; he had to have eaten half the bag by now.

"Granted, we don't necessarily want a repeat, but we don't blame you." Tony held, "Quit hogging all the cherries, Legolas." He said, yanking the bag from Clint.

"But they're good."

"Yeah, exactly." Tony said, sticking his tongue out at Clint childishly and grabbing a handful from the bag just before Clint stole it back.

"Captain, I think it's in your best interest to retire to your bedchambers." Thor said, leaning over to Steve and noting his blood-stained shirt and bruised knuckles.

"Yeah, go to bed Steve. That's an order." Tony agreed around a mouthful of fruit. He spit a pit into his hand as Steve stood up.

"Not arguing." Steve said, turning from the table and crossing the floor toward his room. It was the first time Thor noticed that there was a Steve-sized hole in the wall. It was actually quite noticeable, and quite large. Thor pondered how it got there, but he figured it had something to do with the Hulk, so he kept quiet.

The remaining Avengers watched as Steve took a look from the closed door to the giant hole, and then opted for the easier option. He climbed through the hole. They all watched as he collapsed on his bed, headfirst.

"Oh dear." Thor said, drawing a handful of titters from the crowd.

* * *

"Do you think he's asleep?" Half an hour later, and they were still watching Steve through the giant hole in the wall. He hadn't moved from when he fell face forward onto the bed.

"Probably." Clint replied, stretching out his aching limbs. It had been a long day. He imagined it had been even longer for Cap, who'd begun the day with a nightmare.

Now he thought about, fighting with Natasha, finding Steve trying to kill Tony, had felt like _years _ago. Time was a strange thing, Clint mused.

Clint and Tony were still fighting over the cherries, and Bruce had finally put some pants on and was talking to Thor. They were all happy that their favorite god was with them, because now it felt almost like the team was complete.

The road was still bumpy of course, and they were far from their destination, but for a moment, there, sitting in the kitchen, whispering and giggling into covered hands, there was an odd sort of rightness. The fact that they'd just been beaten to a pulp by the Hulk and that there was concrete dust everywhere didn't even seem to matter.

Until it did. "Well, I'm going to bed." Natasha said, and Clint started, having forgotten that she was there. He turned around, and noticed immediately that she refused to meet his eyes. That her face was pale and her fists were clenched.

"'Night." Tony said, snatching up the last cherry with a victory whoop, but Clint was already distracted.

"Wait, Nat?" He called. She pretended not to hear him, refusing to turn around and let him read her, like she knew he could.

Clint got up, sighed, and followed her.

* * *

**AN: IN CELEBRATION OF THE BIG FIVE-OH in REVIEWS AND TRIPLE DIGITS IN FOLLOWERS (because I am the type of person to freak out over just one or two) I have posted early. Ok, so maybe I have buttloads of homework and MORE social living (life-ing? whatever, it's still weird) this weekend so that I might not get to post, but STILL DEAR LORD I LOVE YOU ALL. **

**Anyway, since this is my first fic and I'm still exploring the characters and stuff, I understand that while there's quite a bit of whump, it lacks in the feels department. I'm working on that, just not in this story. I've got a Cap one-shot and a team tragedy up in which I am practicing balancing the feels out. For me fanfiction writing is just a way to expand my skills. Thus, I am aware that this fic might be a little bumpy, and it's definitely missing things I originally meant to put in when I first started writing it. I guess what I'm just trying to say is THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR STICKING WITH ME and I promise to never disappoint. (And if i do, feel free to point it out.)**

**Anyway, have I told you all that I'm very, very appreciative of you? Because I am. **


	14. Chapter 14

**This chapter is dedicated to my frequent reviewers: sailorraven34, salwyn 77, carolzocas, fezwearingjellybannanas. You guys rock.**

**And to my other reviewers:**

**random reader WITH a profile: And I understood _that _reference. But, just so you know, our Evil Lunatic Psycho Guy isn't necessarily Loki. Our trickster God may or may not be behind all of this. (You'll find out veeerry soon. Like next chapter soon.)**

**Cassodembreakankia: I loved that quote! And I thought that it was important that Thor had those types of views, because he's obviously very different, and his culture is different. As a lot of people portray him as this sappy idiotic sort of demigod, I wanted to make him seem a little bit different, but more of confused different. I hate hate hate how Thor is portrayed as this giant idiot in other fics (At least in serious ones) because he really isn't. Him and Steve are just a little behind, but that definitely doesn't make them stupid. **

**Elvenya: Well, you're in luck. I'd call this the apex of the Clintasha story arch, but, well, it's not really the end... you'll see why. **

**And to everyone else, Qweb and Agent Ruby Red, and thegirlwhowaited 411, thanks for the review. And without furthur ado...**

* * *

Natasha let the door slam behind her.

She stood in that white room with the beige bed and the city view and let the loneliness sink into her. Something had clicked within the group, something vital and living now existed between them. She now knew that whoever was close to the edge, literally or figuratively, they'd have a teammate there, ready to draw them back. Thor had brought Bruce back. Steve had _literally_ pulled Clint back. But what about her? She'd acknowledged earlier that the basis of her new life with SHIELD had become unstable, like a building after an earthquake. But she hadn't known that she would fall.

What would her team do if they knew that she was already over the edge? Something had happened tonight, between Steve taking the impact on the stairs, Bruce crying softly into his glasses, between Thor and cherries and whispered jokes on the downhill of a long day. Something had changed, but she was still on the outside looking in. She'd never felt more alone.

She flicked the light switch and it was a moment before they came on. She waited for half a second in the darkness, but even when the lights finally came on, she still felt black. Her vision was fuzzy and she felt like she couldn't move.

Her mind was spinning, her heart fluttering with the onset of pain so thick it made her eyes water. She did was she always did, pushed it away, shoved it down, pretended that she was nothing more than a sociopathic shell who knew only her duty and her skills. For the first time in a long time it wasn't working. She crossed the room and turned the radio on, hoping some mindless pop song would clear her head.

She stared at the clock. It had been broken ever since she'd moved in. The numbers were spotty, flat lines against a red digital background. She stared at it for a while, trying not to think, trying to focus only on her surroundings.

There were two soft knocks on her door, which she chose to ignore. Instead, she stood, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes until it hurt.

This was not who she was. She was Black Widow, assassin turned super spy, skills unparalleled. She was the best of the best, and there was no room for petty things like heartache. For God's sake, she'd been this way her entire life. She'd never trusted anyone, never been trusted, never been a part of something bigger than herself. She thought of the man in the shower. One of her first kills as an adult. She'd lured him in and ripped his life away. And she'd stood in his blood and watched it pour down the drain. And that was her life. That was all she knew. Even after she'd left the Red Room and Clint had saved her life, nothing really changed. Nothing ever changed. Until now. It amazed her that such a simple thing like friendship had seemed to uproot her whole life.

She was losing everything. Her work, which she'd thrown herself into her whole life to distract herself from her childhood. Her own trust in herself and in her abilities. She was even losing Clint. She could feel him becoming one of them, letting himself care and trust and love. And she'd trained herself never to do that. That should have been a good thing. So why was it making her feel so awful?

She pressed her hands in harder, craving to feel something other than the torrent of emotions that was currently ripping her apart.

Two more knocks sounded, and she continued to ignore them, uncaring as to who was on the other side of her door. She wanted this life. She chose to be alone. So now she could only live the life she had picked for herself.

A door opened. "Natasha?" a familiar, tentative voice called from behind her.

Her shoulders clenched. He was using his warm voice, one that he reserved for only her when he knew that she was having problems. The voice was almost unfamiliar to her, however, because she rarely let him in far enough to know how she was feeling.

With that thought, she gave in.

She was on a mission that was no longer worth it.

"Clint," She spun, facing him even as her features screwed up and her eyes moistened. "I don't want to be angry at you anymore." She said, and he immediately understood her underlying meaning. She was angry at him for far more than what was on the surface. She was mad because of the emotions that had been brought up. She was mad because she couldn't keep them in check when they weren't under her control. She looked down at her trembling hands. "I don't want to fight anymore." She whispered.

She was surprised to find warmth around her. He had, apparently, crossed the room swiftly, and now his arms were laced around her. She hesitated, and then broke completely. She buried her face into his warm skin where his neck met his shoulder and linked her arms around his waist, letting the tears flow. They were a silent flow of her history, her final white flag.

The song on the radio changed, and the two of them let the words sink into them, standing there, holding one another until the pain stopped. Her grip tightened around him, holding him like he was the only life raft in the empty, black sea she was floating in. He'd always been the one to pick her up, whether or not he knew it.

She had wondered what her team would do if they knew she was falling. And now she knew the answer. They would, quite simply, pick her up and help her walk again.

Sometimes you have to fall before you can be saved.

Clint didn't say anything for a long while, and there was only the sound of his steady heartbeat against her cheek, his regular, calming breathing against her hair. And there was a song, a particularly haunted song, that filtered through her pores and fitted through her head.

"_I don't want you to leave, won't you hold my hand_?"

She drew a ragged breath, letting herself cry onto his shoulder, soaking his shirt with mascara. He didn't try to speak, maybe because he didn't know what to say. She could feel his surprise in the ridges of his muscles, but she didn't care. She was changing, subtly, going in a different direction. They all were. They were changing each other.

"_Oh won't you stay with me? You're all I need."_

They stayed like that for a while, until Natasha, the cold, unemotional Natasha reared her head and convinced her to try and get herself together. She balled her fists in the back of his shirt and managed to take a large breath in and look up at him. "I'm ruining your shirt." She observed.

Clint just smiled and lifted a hand to her cheek, wiping at the wetness there.

"_This ain't love, it's clear to see."_

"I don't care." He replied, his voice heavy with meaning. His fingers lingered at her cheek, his gray eyes searching hers. "Natasha?"

"_Why am I so emotional? This is not a good look, gain some self-control._"

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"_And deep down I know this never works. But you can lay with me so it doesn't hurt_."

He opened his mouth and then faltered. It was the first ungraceful thing she'd seen the Hawk ever do.

And then she closed her eyes, taking in the situation. She was an emotional wreck, a battered piece of machinery out of commission. And he was all around her, the warmth that was keeping her standing, the strength that she never knew she needed. Her mind was whirling, so perhaps what she did next was out of sheer desperation and confusion, but she didn't think so.

She cracked her eyes open to look, just for a second, in his bottomless, caring irises, and kissed him.

He broke it immediately, taking a step backwards and out of her embrace. She was hurt, for a moment, before she realized that Clint was not inside her head, and did not know the emotions there. He was staring down at her, wild-eyed and confused.

She probably looked insane. She didn't care.

Her hands slid up to his pectorals, where she hesitated, and pushed him back gently. He fell backwards, landing with a muted thud on the bed.

And then she was kissing him again. Harder, this time, with fervent desperation. He responded this time, teasing her mouth open with a muffled grunt. Back when they worked at SHIELD, most everyone already thought that they were sleeping together. And those that knew they weren't had a betting pool of when they'd start.

Dryly, in the back of her mind, she wondered what they'd think of this. A broken Black Widow coming on to a surprised Hawkeye. She supposed that everyone suspected that it would be the other way around; Clint, ever the nicer one, always seemed more invested in their relationship. But Clint was the only thing that never moved in the storms of her life. She owed more than a debt to him.

She'd told Loki that it wasn't love. Feeling his hands snaking up her back, his lips molding into hers, she knew that she was right. It wasn't love.

This was magnetic. An attraction that had been forged in a long awaited friendship, a connection between two broken people that filled each other's cracks. It wasn't love, because it was so much more.

It was the man who'd made a different call, and the woman who'd spent the rest of her life trusting him. It was cognitive recalibration and long nights of sleepless recon. It was hospital rooms and bullet holes and yelling at the doctors when he didn't wake up. It was watching him sleep on the Quinjet on the way to their next mission, letting him help set her broken arm though she hadn't needed his help. It was fighting and leaving and yelling, but it also was whispered words to soothe the nightmares, the warmth of his jacket on a cold rooftop.

_Oh won't you stay with me? You're all I need._

Clint sat up, Natasha straddling him, and broke off for a moment, breathing heavily. She felt his hipbones beneath her thighs, and realized that he'd lost weight in the past few weeks.

There was a question in his eyes. She swallowed around the lump in her throat, and felt that she was the closest she'd ever get to home, right there, right then, on the eighty-fifth floor in a tower that wasn't her own, in the arms of this man.

She answered his question by kissing him again. They stayed frozen in that position for a few moments, before Clint groaned and broke it again, turning his head away. Natasha kissed the line of his jaw, moving to his throat, feeling the throb of his veins against her mouth.

"Nat," he gasped. As his eyes darkened, he pushed her away. "Wait." He said, and she fought away the disappointment as he shifted her off his lap.

"What is it?" She asked, momentarily distracted by the pleasant way her lips throbbed and the scary way her heart was beating. The lump in her throat thickened, and whether it was attraction or emotion, she wasn't sure.

"I gotta…" he broke off, finding her lips, "I need to…" His hands found the hem of her shirt. "God," He grunted, and with difficulty, pulled fully away from her. "I'll be right back." He stuttered, running a hand through his already mussed hair. "I promise." He sputtered earnestly, giving her a lingering kiss. Then he got up, his weight shifting off the bed, and made his way out of her door.

It clicked shut behind him.

His absence was heartbreaking. She could feel the cold loneliness of the room around her, amplified by the memories of his arms around her. There was hope, now, but it wasn't enough to bring her fully back from her boiling pot of emotions. Only Clint could do that.

Minutes passed, and he didn't come back. She closed her eyes, gratified by the darkness, before a cold thought filtered in. _Shit_.

She looked down at her nails.

They weren't painted. But were they when she was with Clint? She didn't remember, all she could remember was his lips and his tongue and his warm skin and calloused hands.

Heart beating, she stood up, looking around the room. It was quiet and dark and she couldn't tell if anything was out of place. So was it just a waking dream? A daymare as Stark had called it? She didn't know what was worse—the one she'd had in the shower, or the thought that what she and Clint had just shared had been one. It was something so beautiful and raw and heart-wrenchingly open. She didn't want it to be taken away from her. For once in her lifetime, she _wanted _to be open.

Natasha wiped her wet mascara away, took a deep breath in, and left her room.

Thor and Tony were still seated at the table, having a thumb war. "Have you seen Clint?" She asked.

Tony sent her a brief look, "Why? Ow, Thor, don't break my hand."

"You are cheating."

"No, I'm—"

"Guys." Natasha said. Her voice was well-managed, and the simple fact that she was back to being stoic made her want to break down again. "Focus. Where's Clint?"

Tony looked at her fully, and then shrugged. "I dunno. Haven't seen him." He said, resuming his cheating.

She looked around the common room, empty save for Bruce half-asleep on the couch and Tony and Thor at the table. She took a step back, worry leaking into her subconscious, doubt puncturing her brain.

Her world had shattered all around her, so never in her life had she thought that she could break any more. Nothing else in her life had ever felt so real. But there was always the possibility that it wasn't.

_Darling stay with me. Stay with me._

* * *

**Creds to Sam Smith for that kick-ass song. I don't usually include lyrics with chapters, but I wrote this one on a constant repeat of "Stay with Me" and then I realized that the lyrics worked so well, and in the movie in my head, I could totally see an emotional sex montage with that song. (Though there was no sex, but whatever)**

**I'm going to post again tomorrow. Don't worry. **


	15. Chapter 15

**I'm baaack. (Hahah I'm proud I kept my promise.) Anyhoo, for those of you with burning questions about the last chapter, there is a Clint POV toward the end. So you will know. Don't worry. **

**Also, this chapter kinda jumps around because I really wanted to portray the characters' state of mind. **

**Beware of cussing. There's a few f-bombs. **

* * *

Tony woke to a beeping sound, but he hadn't set an alarm. "Sir, please get up." JARVIS was saying, his voice entirely too cheerful for the hour. The beeping continued.

He was warm and the world around him was still pleasantly dark. He wanted to sleep again. He wanted to roll over and face oblivion once more. He was tired of long, restless nights, of staring up at blank ceilings, terrified that a dream would take him. All he wanted was a long expanse of blankness.

Tony rolled over. "Unless something is on fire, JARVIS, go away." He said pausing only for a moment to wonder what the beeping sound was. Maybe something _was_ on fire. Steve could work the toaster, right?

"Sir, it is imperative that you get up right away." JARVIS said, sounding more annoyed than worried.

Tony groaned. He was too tired for this. Sleep was fleeting for the insomniac, and he preferred to stay asleep once he got there. As long as there was no dreams. Last night had been dreamless, but restless all the same. He felt like he hadn't slept at all. "When did you get so needy?"

From beside him, Pepper landed a fist in his stomach. "Tony, if you don't make these noises stop I'm going to pop your eyes out." She grumbled.

Tony refused, squeezing his eyes shut, but the chaos in his room was too hard to overcome. "Alright, I'm up." He yawned, rolling to a seated position. "Override alarm."

The beeping sound stopped immediately, and Tony spared one last glance at Pepper's snoozing form and got to his feet. Once he was safely out of eye-popping distance, he grumbled, "What is it, JARVIS?"

"Sir, the algorithm has reached a match." JARVIS said as Tony popped the door open to the bathroom and stepped through.

Looking at himself in the mirror, Tony watched a smile form on his face. "Alright, get the team up. Tell them to meet in the lab in half an hour." He then watched as the smile fell off his face. "We got the bastard."

* * *

It had been a confusing twelve hours for Thor. He'd been thrown back into being in a team altogether too abruptly. Maybe the Avengers didn't know it, but to any outsider everything that involved them was chaos. Like, for example, the bodiless voice that drifted through the tower.

"Mr. Odinson?" The voice began, scaring Thor from a deep slumber. "Mr. Odinson?"

He jerked awake. "Mjölnir, to me!" he called, immediately clicking into panic mode. His hammer met his hands with familiarity. Immediately, any semblance of restfulness drained out of him, and his brain kicked into battle mode.

"Sir…" The voice began, but Thor was already jumping out of bed, swinging his hammer ferociously.

"Show yourself, you wretched thing!" He called. "If you are to fight, fight me like a man. Come from your hiding place, oh puny one." Cowards are the ones who do not fight fair. They are the ones who undermine from within.

"Mr. Odinson, sir, I—" the voice pleaded, and Thor whirled toward where he heard the voice. His bearded face flashed with confused anger, and he darted across the room. His armor began to build at his arms, chain linked, silver metal climbing up his biceps. By the time he skidded toward the door, he was ready for battle with whatever nuisance was in his room.

"I am not in a gaming mood."

"Mr. Stark requests…" The voice said, sounding tired.

Thor whirled and swung, hopping onto his unmade bed. From there, he turned in circles, ready to pounce on the invisible being, should he talk again.

"Mr. Stark requests that you…" the voice tried again, and Thor brightened with an idea.

"The Man of Iron!" He shouted, looking toward the ceiling. His eyes ghosted over his now ruined room—the bedframe was broken, the nightstand had capsized—from his rushing around trying to hit things. "I'll be back for you, ghastly ghost." He threatened, and then jumped from the bed and through the ceiling.

* * *

Bruce had been awake for hours. Actually, he hadn't slept much.

He felt so awful for what he'd done, even though his team was nothing if not forgiving. Hell, they'd already started making jokes (not at his expense, of course) about the whole thing. None of them minded. They just _accepted_. They found something in him they could relate to, and continued to relate to it, despite the fact that he'd almost killed Cap and had definitely caused Clint to almost fall to his death.

When he first stepped on the helicarrier before the Chitauri invasion, Bruce had been weary. None of them had even blinked at him. Steve had made it clear that the only part he cared about was his brain. And Tony had been overwhelmingly supportive, despite having just met him. The only time the Hulk was even brought up was when it was threatening to come out or when Tony thought himself to be funny.

But even then, he'd doubted them. He _was _the Hulk. The Hulk _defined _him, at least in many people's minds. His anger had become him, and he was nothing more than a monster living in a human's bodies. They had to think that, right? Everyone else did.

It was a lonely existence, being that hated.

And then Bruce had felt the way that ice stings when it's in your lungs, the way your heart feels when it beats around shrapnel. The way it feels to watch your brother destroy the place you once called home. The broken terror as the poison flips through your veins and washes away your memories. The Avengers already had so much to deal with. What ever had possessed them to want to take on another responsibility? The Hulk was nothing more than a lethal nuisance. None of them needed that. None of them wanted that.

But to them, he wasn't the Hulk.

And the man they needed, the man they wanted, was Doctor Bruce Banner.

He couldn't believe it had taken him this long to figure that out.

* * *

Tony hardly turned when the man burst through his floor.

Instead, he only leaned his head against his closet door frame and wondered if Pepper would make good on her threat and pop his eyes out.

She, however, screeched, scrambling backward until she almost fell off the bed. "Tony!" She shouted breathily.

Tony glanced to the side and saw an angered Thor hovering above a new hole in his floor. "I was thinking about putting in a slide there, anyway." He said, and turned his head back to leaning against the door frame. He contemplated bashing his head against it. Why did he have to choose a team that was so _exhausting_?

"I have the answer to your problem, human." Thor commanded, his voice like human thunder.

"Oh, do you now?" Tony asked with disinterest, closing his eyes. He was already getting a headache, and it wasn't even 8:30 AM yet.

"The invisible one."

"What?"

"The man who is in your head is in your house, Man of Iron. I have heard him. He woke me from my deepest slumber. I have heard his vile voice."

Tony turned to give him a look of pure derision. "What the hell are you blathering about, Barbie?"

"The one whom we hear but we cannot see. He is the man you are looking for."

The look intensified. Good Lord, who invited this idiot? "You mean _JARVIS_?" Tony questioned incredulously. He rubbed his temples, trying in vain to keep the headache from becoming a migraine. The past few days had been hell for him, and he was caught between wanting to hit himself or hit someone else. Unfortunately, if he tried to hit Thor, he'd probably be blasted all the way back to Malibu. "He's my AI, dude. Artificial intelligence. He doesn't have a body because he's a few lines of code programmed onto Stark servers."

"You mean, he is not…?"

"An evil, dream-stealing little bitch? No, Thor. He is not." Tony sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. "He's my own creation, so that means there's no way he could be evil."

Thor's eyes narrowed, his hammer gripped with white knuckles. "I still do not trust him." He sneered.

"Ok then." Tony focused on breathing through his nose. "But do me a favor? Next time you have a stupid theory like that, please take the stairs."

* * *

Natasha hadn't slept.

She was afraid to, now. She was so _done _with the lines between reality and fantasy being so blurred. Her mind was whirling and she didn't want to be emotional anymore. It was so much more comfortable to be her usual, stoic self. But, Jesus, even that was screwed up now.

Usually she could press anything down, stow it away and keep it locked forever. But now the act of doing it hurt more than the emotions themselves. The fact that she ever had to do that, that she once had not one person in the world now became her own personal hell. She'd gotten used to the loneliness because she had no other choice. And now, only an inch of what she _could_ have had been exposed and she _wanted _it. She craved it more than the air that she breathed. You can't miss something you never had, but now that she'd had it, she wanted more.

She knew that everyone has a breaking point, and she'd reached hers. The problem was whether it was _real _or not.

Emptiness is not a particularly comfortable feeling. She'd been empty before. Feeling it now, the legitimate expanse of room within her, gave her unpleasant memories. All her life she had been pretending she was empty, but she hadn't actually known that if she tried hard enough, she would be. There was now nothing left.

So, needless to say, she was stressed out when JARVIS told her to get up. She was even more stressed when the AI said that the program Stark and Banner had made had reached a match. It didn't get any better that she realized that the file would have a location, and they'd be mobilized by this afternoon.

She wasn't sure she was ready for combat again. It was a weird thing to admit, even mentally, but she was just so goddamned _drained_. Her thoughts were everywhere, wondering whether or not she was going to kill Clint for upping and running or pretend nothing happened because it was just an evil, sociopathic little dream she'd been given.

It was a hell of a dream, though.

* * *

Tony Stark looked tired.

That was the first thing Steve noticed as he walked into the lab that morning. He wondered whether the billionaire had slept, or whether he'd had a nightmare. He crossed the room and stood next to Stark, who was leaning against a table, watching Thor.

Steve followed his eyes, and saw that Thor was bent at the waist, observing a dust-covered computer monitor that even Steve knew was old. "Why is he in full battle armor?" Steve inquired, rubbing a few fingers down his sore shoulder.

He awoke this morning before JARVIS's wake-up call, and found that he'd more or less healed from the fight the previous day. His bruises were gone, the blood was dried and the cuts were healed. He only felt sore, almost as if he'd done a particularly hard work-out the day before. He hoped that the day could be spent doing more team bonding. Perhaps he could explore this 'binge watching' as Clint called it.

Tony waited for a little while before responding, as both of them watched as Thor walked around the lab, clearly enthralled with all that Midgardian science. "Please don't ask." Tony responded.

"Alright." Steve agreed, clasping his hands in front of him

* * *

Clint was jumpy.

He hadn't slept.

All he could do was freak the fuck out.

He'd left her. God, he'd left her when she needed him the most. But he'd been freaked out and surprised and tired and God knew what was running through his mind when he'd removed her from his own embrace. What the hell was wrong with him?

_Fuck_.

He had a faint idea why he'd done it, of course. Actually, two.

Number One. Someone who can get inside your head probably can plant stuff in there, Trojan horses that leave you wounded far after the dream is over. Shrapnel from the explosion. Emotions had been running high the past few days, especially his own. How was he expected to deal with a bombshell that landed in his lap when he was totally unsure of himself? Fuck, what if this all had been some elaborate plan to ruin whatever connection they were beginning to build? Clint didn't know which way was up, or which way was down and now his own actions were confusing him. It was too much. Just. Too. Much.

Number two. The fear. Natasha was the only thing that Clint had. She was his best friend, his most trusted ally, the woman who was always shooting by his side. (Even though she'd doubted him the past few days, it was true. Her previous worries about his trust had been not been based in fact.) He didn't want to callously throw caution to the wind, let himself have the feelings he'd denied having since day one, only to have it end in complete tragedy. His whole life was a mess, and he wasn't about to let his relationship with Nat suffer, too.

It was too late, because said bombshell that he'd been handed had already exploded. _Fuck_. He'd ruined it. He'd fucking ruined it because he hadn't had his head on straight and thought that fucking _leaving_ would solve this whole problem. Of course it hadn't.

And now all he could think about was the feeling of weightlessness, of complete and utter _wholeness_ when she was in his arms. Fuck. Fuck this all. Not only had he now ruined everything Nat and him had been building over the past years, but he'd ruined _himself_. Because now he only wanted two things. Back-to-the-wall-nails-in-his-back sex, and her head on the pillow next to him when he woke up the next morning. And the morning after that.

Each morning, each day, until the sun no longer rose and his breath no longer came.

So he waited. He waited in that lab for her to show up and the debriefing to start, and he rocked on the balls of his feet and he watched Steve and Tony engage in a low conversation. He listened to Thor putter around in the lab, but in his mind he was in that room, pushing her off him, thrusting hands through his hair, and then leaving.

He'd screwed up.

And then the meeting was starting and everyone had gathered, including the new arrival. Natasha. She looked at him, her face morbidly curious, and Clint wondered if she was hiding a mask of furious rage.

He fought to keep his face carefully blank, but what for? He'd hurt her when she had been flayed open. There were no excuses.

With a withering sense of confidence, Clint knew she was going to kill him.

Things would never, ever be the same.

"Alright," Tony said, drawing attention to his pinched, annoyed face. "Let's get this show on the road, shall we?"

* * *

The official name was Onierokinesis. The official definition was "the ability to enter and manipulate the dreams of oneself and others." The only way his powers worked was if he was in the dream with them. Which meant that jackasss had been in each and every dream the Avengers were having. It also probably meant that he had been watching them for quite a while, getting to know their inner-most thoughts so that he could conjure up a dream to implant it in a different head.

He was a strong onierokinitic, as demonstrated by the fact that he could manipulate daydreams. Even if your mind wandered for a split second, he could be there, just waiting.

The man himself had no official name. He was a ghost who got on SHIELD's radar thirty years ago when a handful of agents got trapped in nightmares that they couldn't be revived from. Every couple of months or so, a new batch would get trapped within their own minds, going crazy with pain so vicious that the sleeping agents lashed out at anyone who got close. The nightmares would always end the same way—he'd manipulate them to correspond with real life, and the agents would kill themselves. The Avengers had gotten off fairly easily in comparison.

But the man had no motive, no apparent reason to do anything he ever did. SHIELD hadn't known much about him, but there had been no apparent connection between the agents who died, save that they were SHIELD agents. There were field agents, soldiers, spies, desk workers, cafeteria ladies, secretaries. Each from different branches. None of them knew each other.

And now he'd reappeared, just to take down what was pretty much the only thing left of SHIELD. The Avengers Initiative, Fury's own brainchild. There was a frail connection there, but none of the team members could put it together. There was some reason for this man's anger against SHIELD, but there was also a reason that he'd changed his MO for the Avengers.

They couldn't put it together and they never would. He may have had a front-row seat to the chaos of their minds, but they had no idea of the psychosis that was in his own.

If he had an endgame, they had no idea what it was. There was something off about the whole thing, like it was a movie that was missing a scene, a book with part of the rising action ripped out.

None of them admitted it, but they were all at least slightly afraid. They were facing a man with unparalleled power. Saying he was 'spontaneous' was an understatement. They didn't know who he was or where he was, but they knew they had to defeat him before he defeated them. Their ignorance gave them a serious sense of foreboding. All they had was a mostly-empty file and each other.

But they weren't invincible.

Hell, they still couldn't even work together. Maybe they were getting there, and maybe there was potential, but that didn't mean that Steve and Tony were suddenly best friends, or that the Hulk suddenly had his lid screwed perfectly tight. They'd discovered that in the past few days.

In this case, there were too many unknowns. The team was Bigfoot, stepping in a field covered in landmines. One wrong step?

Tick tick boom.

* * *

**Alright,things are obviously coming to a head soon. I'm going to be deep in the wilderness this weekend, so don't expect anything until late Monday night. **

**Anyhoo, does anyone have any predictions? Thoughts? Jokes? Plans to take over the world? Leave them as reviews :D**

**XOXO**


	16. Chapter 16

**I'm back from my wonderful backpacking trip. And thus the update. **

**Again, this chapter is a little choppy, both because there were messes that needed cleaned up, and also literally _everything _is all over the place inside of the character's minds right now. **

* * *

Bruce walked out of the debriefing visibly shaken. Usually, letting his anger out once was good enough for a long, long while, but the stress was back on him, wearing against his skin. The problems were creating friction between his atoms, enough to know that he was already on the edge again.

He was a smart man. Sure, he'd made a few mistakes, but there were very few people in the world that could go head to head with him, mentally or physically. Tony was one of them. Regardless, Bruce could see the obvious flaws in the SHIELD report. They'd left out a name, for one. They had drawn no obvious conclusion about who or what this villain really was. Hell, SHIELD didn't even have the resources to decide whether or not he really was a _he_.

Since when did SHIELD do such a half-assed job? They were a mysterious bunch, but there work was always cut and dry. This guy is evil, and here is the proof. Done and done. Sure, there was the little detail that they were all HYDRA double-agents, but that wasn't the point, not really. They had a long track record of successful missions and correct intelligence. And they always, always took care of their own. So why had a couple dozen forced suicides flown by the wayside? Why had they let such a powerful man slip away?

Someone, somewhere was making a statement. That was something that Bruce knew for sure. He didn't know if it was HYDRA, or something completely different. But it _was _a statement.

There were no answers, at least not at the moment. Now, what they had to do was find out where he was.

Bruce, distracted by his own anger, did not notice that he was suddenly alone with Thor, however. He remembered Steve pulling Tony aside and telling him that they needed to talk, but that had been back in the lab, next to the beeping computer with No Name's file pulled off of the recovered threat list. He didn't remember the two spies drifting away. Judging by the way Clint had slipped out of Natasha's room the previous night, they had a lot to talk about.

"What's on your mind?" Bruce asked, surprising himself. The Asgardian had a faraway look in his eyes.

"The past." The warrior answered, rubbing at his bearded jaw. "Thinking of this mind control, of this magic. I had hoped…" Thor trailed off, his eyes drifting down toward Bruce. "My brother is dead." He said finally, his voice low.

Bruce didn't know what to say, mostly because he didn't know how he felt. The only positive thing that had come from that statement, however, was the fact that it allowed Bruce to overcome much of his own anger, and focus all his wits into the conversation.

"I understand your hesitation." Thor said, and Bruce winced inwardly at the realization that a response should have been intimate and immediate. "Though I wish, for my own sake, it was not so."

"I—" Bruce began, and then started over. "Loki was your brother. I get it. You love him not because of who he was, but because of who you wanted him to be."

Thor looked at him abruptly. "I suppose you are right, Doctor Banner."

Bruce smiled. "I suppose so. Just as right as I was about your thumb war last night."

With that, Thor snapped back from his memories, his blue eyes sparking. "Your Midgardian games are so redundant." He paused, "And confusing."

* * *

"You sure this is going to work?" Tony was giving Steve his signature doubtful look. Steve turned away from it, looking at the blinking words on the computer monitor.

"It's the only thing we've got." Steve replied, sounding sure of his own strategy, though only for Tony's sake. He looked at the words for a moment longer, watching the details of their enemy waiver on the screen. "Now we only have to find out where he is."

"Central Park." Tony said, his head snapping up, his eyes dilating. The tired look on his face was replaced by a sneer of fierce impatience.

"What?" Steve asked, taken aback.

"Central Park. Now."

"_Now_? Tony, what are you talking about?"

The look faded. There was a beat of strained silence. "Why are you looking at me like that?" Tony finally said.

"What about Central Park?" Steve squinted at Tony.

"Central Park?" Tony asked, giving Steve the distinct feeling that the conversation was about to go around in a circle.

"That's what you said."

"When did I say that?"

"When I asked you…" Steve trailed off, looking back at the screen where No Name's file flashed. "…where to find him." His voice lowered as his brain kicked into gear.

Tony started babbling behind him. "I never said that. Turn up your hearing aide next time, Gramps."

"He's here." Steve whispered, mostly to himself.

"Who's here? The Sandman? Freddy Kruger over there?" he pointed at the screen. "_Where _is here? Here as in New York, or here as in your head?" Tony didn't seem to be in a very good mood this morning; that much was apparent.

"Both." Steve answered, turning back to look at Tony. "He's sending us a message."

"About what?"

"The final fight, his last move. It's happening now." Steve swallowed around a thickening throat. "In the park."

Tony looked at him like he was bat-shit crazy. "And how did you figure this out?"

"He _told_ me, Tony. Just now." Steve sprung from his frozen position near the lab table and suddenly his feet started working again. "Got me the message by getting into my head."

"Isn't that a little soon?" The billionaire caught up with him easily. "All of this _just _started. We just found out who he was. Or at least, found out all we could. And why would he tell _you_?" Tony added as an afterthought. "There's too much missing, Cap."

"You think I don't know that?"

"Well, we can't just charge over there based on a half-empty file and something out of your head." Tony grabbed his arm, getting Steve to stop. Steve knew what was happening here, and he was too exhausted to stop it. "We don't even know what we're dealing with. You're plan hinges around a battle, Cap, and there _isn't going to be one_. He's not going to fight us right out. Why would he?"

Tony looked like his anger was growing. Steve sighed and said, "Do you have anything better?" He meant for the question to be sincere, but his own growing annoyance, stemming from the way Tony's hand was biting into one of the bruises on his arm, was peeping through. So, of course, Tony took a hold of his annoyance and brought it even further.

"You're seriously going to bring that up again?" Tony asked, his voice low and cold. Steve remembered his own insults, his anger letting his words get the best of him. He was nothing without the suit. That Tony Stark doesn't know anything about strategy. There was a lot of bad blood between them, and all of it had been skimming under the surface, both within their subconscious and in their real life.

It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since the last time they'd fought.

_Here we go again._

"No, I'm not." Steve said. "That isn't what I meant."

"Screw you, Steve." Tony let him go and took a few steps backward. His face was pinched in apparent anger. "You know, Captain America might be the paragon of virtue and respect, or whatever, but you, Steve Rogers, are an asshole." He looked up, his eyes gleaming, and Steve braced himself for the punch line. It wouldn't be pretty. "I stick by my words, Bottle Boy."

There it was again. Bottle Boy. _The only thing special about you came out of a bottle_.

It wasn't the words that hurt so much as what they undermined. Like the serum _hadn't _taken everything within Steve and amplified it. The suggestion that he was nothing more than walking muscle, a blonde, brainless soldier who had nothing special before, and the only important part now was his ability to follow orders and hit people. The suggestion that everything he'd done so far, everything and every_one _he'd sacrificed, wasn't because he was a hero, but because his only thoughts stemmed from serum-laden duty. That he was no leader. That he was _nothing_.

Steve looked away, suddenly unable to meet Tony's eyes. "Don't start this, Stark." His voice was low, a mix between a threat and unemotional.

"I didn't. You did." Tony pressed on, "I'm just finishing it."

"Why?" Steve asked, suddenly, surprising himself. "What's your problem with me, Tony? We had a bad start, I'll give you that, but why do we have to keep going down this path? We don't have to be friends, Stark. Just teammates." Tony paused, visibly. Steve shook his head and tried to bring the conversation back to where it needed to go. "We don't have much on this guy, but we do have a location, and we do have a job to do."

"But the plan…"

"The plan is all we have, and the more time we spend trying to perfect it, the more chance we'll have at screwing it up." Steve fought to keep his voice from sounding snappy. They could _not _under any circumstances fight right now. The team had to be in the best graces in order for this to work. "Do you see much of a choice here?"

Tony paused, breathing in a controlled breath. Steve hoped he'd come around and agree with him. If the man really was in Central Park as he'd said, then he could be wreaking havoc, killing people, _right now_, and it would all be on the Avenger's shoulders. He'd caught them at a disadvantage, after finding out only a slight amount of who he was, and he obviously knew it. He had the predominate upper-hand, the proverbial step ahead. However, he'd have it no matter what they tried to do to prevent him. He could see every one of them for what they truly were, no matter how much they knew about him. There was only one possible way of getting ahead of him, and it didn't matter how much intel they had, or whether or not they were prepared for the battle. Steve and Tony had just spent fifteen minutes talking about it, hadn't they?

Tony groaned. "I hate it when you're right, Rogers."

* * *

_Can we talk_? The words that had come out of her mouth were surprisingly quiet, and even gentler than she intended.

Now, Natasha found herself staring at Clint in the darkened staircase. If she looked up, she could see the smashed flight above her. In her mind's eye, she saw the concrete falling from beneath Clint's feet. She shrugged off the thought.

All through the meeting, she'd been sneaking glances at Clint, trying to decide whether or not he just didn't return the feelings, or if the feelings were never there at all. She still didn't know. (She also didn't know which was worse.)

She didn't know what to say, and she didn't even know where to start. All she could feel was the emotions inside of her. Once dormant, they now threatened to rule the empty abyss inside her.

So Natasha just simply stared at Clint, not bothering to notice if he stared back.

Her heart was beating in her chest, and she was suddenly, violently aware of it. There was something within her that felt a little like stomach acid leaking out through a pin-sized hole. It was not because she was scared or ashamed or emotional.

It was because he had taken a step forward.

Before she could even take another breath, or before her neurons could fire another signal to tell her how to react, he had cross the small space that the landing provided and dragged her hips to his own, and his lips were crushing hers.

She spent a moment in comfortable familiarity, feeling his warm hands radiate through the fabric covering her hips, tasting the desperate desire on his lips, before she jerked away.

"_What_?" She blinked.

There was relief. Total, complete relief. Giddy, soaring, perfect relief. _Fuck_. The weight was off and everything around her reverted into perfect awareness. The blocks of broken concrete. The specks of gray dust in his hair. Her own chest, heaving with breath of air so sweet that she hadn't ever thought she'd taste again.

Clint was talking. "Fuck, Natasha. I'm so sorry, I—"

It occurred to her that she should be mad, that she should be _furious _at him, but all she could think of the fact that she had finally opened up and it had been _real_. And Clint had been there. He hadn't bowed out until afterword. She should be mad.

But all she really felt was grateful.

Thus, she was more than willing to drag him back to her and finish what they'd started the previous night. Everything else was just details. Every pain, every moment that she'd stood forcing it all away no longer had a purpose, because she now felt like she had someone. In a weird way, she felt like she had more than just _someone_. Maybe by finally, _finally_ giving in to Clint, she'd given in to everyone. Maybe now she could acknowledge the depth of gratitude she felt for Steve for diving underneath her and saving her life. Maybe now she could smile at one of Tony's stupid jokes or get to know Bruce better, as she'd wanted to do both since she met them. Now she could ask Thor about Asgard. Now she could kiss Clint.

Unfortunately, they were interrupted, once more. This time it was Bruce, poking his head through the door. "Hey, Tony wants—" He began, and then reddened at the sight of them.

Natasha looked down at herself and Clint, and her vision swayed black for a few moments.

Bruce tried again once they separated. "Tony wants all of us to suit up. It's go time." Bruce said, and then awkwardly let the door fall shut.

She looked up at Clint. She felt whole once more, enough so that she acknowledged that their discussion was far from over.

Now, however, they had work to do.

* * *

"Keep this safe for me, would you?" Tony didn't wait for a response, instead moved forward and snapped it onto the archer's wrist.

Clint peered down at the silver bracelet, wondering what the hell it was. "Are you flirting with me, Stark?"

Tony glanced up from Clint's wrist to the arrows on his back. He lowered his voice. "Only if you let me touch your quiver." He winked, and Clint could hear the obvious euphemism.

"Don't be disgusting." Natasha reprimanded as she reloaded her guns with a fresh magazine. A fresh stab of pain shot at Clint, but he pressed it down. The conversation they'd been having wasn't over, not yet. It had just been interrupted, that's all.

Clint repositioned his quiver on his back and tugged his uniform into place. He'd been in the middle of something important with Natasha when the call to battle had been placed. Now, ten minutes later, he was dressed and ready to gank this sucker. He was still confused as to why they were moving without enough information, and how they'd gotten where the douche was in the first place, but he was ready for blood. No one got to toss him around like this guy had been doing. Not Loki. Not Mr. Sandman, whoever he was.

Across the room, Thor was spinning his hammer in his hands idly, his look pained. He'd been dressed all morning, and probably didn't want to waste another moment not making use of his outfit. Bruce was rubbing his hands on his neck, getting bouncy and antsy again, making Clint wonder, slightly, about his psyche at the moment.

Clint watched as Steve, who had just emerged from his room in his spangly outfit, and him and Tony shared a brief look. "We almost ready?" Cap asked, pulling his cowl over his face.

"Yeah." Natasha responded, causing Clint to look over her way again. He pushed his thoughts away. This was more than Nat and him. This was about the team, and slightly about revenge, and also about justice. It was about being the underdog without a choice and proving to the world that no one, not even a powerful Oneirokinwhatever, can mess with the Avengers.

Clint fit his comm. link into his ear and cracked his neck.

Tony looked from each Avenger. Out of context, they'd all look ridiculous; Nat in her skin-tight leather, Steve in his Americanized spandex, Thor with his cape. "Do you ever think that we, like, belong in a comic book or something?" Tony asked.

Clint laughed. "More than you know."

"Steve's been in a comic book." Bruce said, his voice choppy, but he was trying, at least, to be a part of the conversation and joke along with them.

Cap sighed. "I have no idea what possessed me to tell you that."

"Do you think your movie is on Netflix?" Tony asked, throwing an arm around him and guiding him toward the elevator. "I'd really like to see it."

"Are you handing out signed copies?" Clint inquired, falling into step behind them.

"If we could focus, please…"Steve began, but it was already too late.

* * *

**The humor is a little self aware, I know. But I can't help it. Creds to those who caught my Ultron reference in the last chapter. I really cannot wait until May.**

**Anyway, pulling out the big guns in the next few chapters. Look for an update this weekend. I'm guessing the climax will all be posted this weekend, and then everything else next week. **

**Toodles. **


	17. Chapter 17

**AN: Today at Walmart I saw a Captain America costume that was reversible, and on the other side it was the Winter Soldier. And that made me very, very sad. Because I know how it works in the comics, and bro, Steve Rogers is my main man. (Also, hot damn Chris Evans...) I really really hope they don't kill him off because I'd be sad. I'm sad just looking at that costume.**

**Anyway, you may be wondering why any of this relates, or why I'm sharing, but I got a review toward the beginning that asked whether or not Bucky or Loki would make an appearance. **

**Well, here's your answer. **

* * *

Long after the teasing had ended, and long after they'd all gone their separate ways to search through the park, Steve began to think about Bucky.

Steve hadn't thought about him since first stepping foot onto the elevator and requesting that JARVIS take him to see Tony. However, for a very long while, he'd been looking for him. Steve was never going to give up on him; no matter how brainwashed or broken he was, James Buchanan Barnes was his best friend. He'd been his family when he'd had none. He'd been _Steve's _hero, for when the bullies got tough and the sickness got worse.

It wasn't long after Steve started thinking about him that he appeared.

Steve was walking through a mostly deserted part of the park, in which the benches were empty and the paths were bare, when he felt eyes on the back of his neck. He'd grown used to it, in the few minutes that he'd been walking around. Civilians were pretty curious to see why a full-suited Captain America was in the middle of Central Park.

These eyes, however, were familiarly cold, and Steve turned around, gripping his shield tightly. Of course, there was no one there. Just the early afternoon breeze, rustling through the trees. He pressed his comm. link, regardless.

"You got anything?" He asked.

"Zilch." Tony replied, and the others shared similar responses.

Uneasiness was creeping up his arms and his spine, turning his flesh into goosebumps. It was quiet. When he felt the eyes again, this time he didn't turn around, because he already knew who they belonged to. He didn't want to play a game of cat and mouse with the Winter Soldier, not right now. "So you're working for him, huh?" Steve said slowly. Once the words were out, he turned on his heel.

He knew what to expect, but it still knocked the breath out of him. Bucky was there, but he was the metal-armed monster of his friend. His long hair floated in the sudden wind, his sagging eyelids narrowing. Steve felt the tension thicken in the air, and wanted desperately to _just stop_.

It was funny how when Steve had stopped looking for Bucky, Bucky had shown up.

Static sounded in his ear. "Still _nada_. What about you, Cap?" Clint asked.

Steve swallowed, peering across the distance toward his friend. He didn't respond to Clint's questioning. They just stared at each other for a long moment.

"Cap?" Clint asked again, and Steve still hesitated.

He still didn't respond, because he knew what it meant. He knew the unspoken choice. It was somewhere, simmering below the surface. They didn't know Bucky. All they knew was the Winter Soldier, a liability, an enemy, obviously working for whoever their main man was. Thus, Steve had a choice.

It was Bucky or the Avengers.

"Captain, do you read me?" Clint barked tersely.

The Winter Soldier took a step, but Steve stayed frozen. "We don't have to do this." He said quietly. His heart beat painfully in his chest. Bucky took another step. Steve knew he only had a few more seconds of this strained silence before he'd be torn to shreds if he didn't make the decision.

His hands clenched in their gloves. His throat thickened and the sun was hot enough that he already felt sweat. Everything was just too damn quiet.

At first he was thinking about a nail in his foot, and then the hole in his wall, and he felt like he was falling again, his stomach dropping out of him, the lump growing in his throat. And then he found his thoughts drifting back, floating years and years away, to a sick little boy and his strong friend. That was his past, a time in which he wished he still lived in. "Just one question." Steve said, finding it in him to lift his shield a little bit higher. Bucky paused. "Why'd you do it?" He asked. Maybe it was time to stop white-knuckling it.

The look of confusion on the other's face is what finally made Steve see reason. He saw _it, _then. Finally. The truth. Something that had been there all along.

He felt awake.

He ducked away, talking into the device in his ear. "I've got something. I'm mid-park. Sheep Meadow." He said.

And then it started. Steve whirled around, deflecting the Soldier's first punch and responding with one of his own. He knocked him back a few feet and advanced.

"I'll be at your flank when I get there, Rogers" Natasha said in his ear. "What are we dealing with?"

Steve grunted, "My past," he said, and then drove to attack once more.

He shoved at his friend with his shield, knocking him backwards, once, twice, before Bucky recovered and darted sideways. He landed one, gut-wrenching blow in Steve's unblocked side, and another to his face when Steve overcorrected to deal with the pain.

Bucky, now with the upper-hand, pushed Steve across the clearing with all his might, sending Steve crashing through an empty bench with an earth-shattering crack. As he hit the ground, Bucky was there on top of him, ripping his shield away and sending it spinning across the grass. His fingers bit into his chin and into his cheeks as Bucky squeezed the front of his face and brought it up from the ground.

"Why'd you do it?" Steve stammered, his voice muffled by Bucky's fingers.

"_What?_" The Winter Soldier asked, confused again. His voice was gruff from underuse, and nothing like Steve remembered. He blinked the confusion away and then slammed Steve's head back toward the concrete.

Steve had expected it, and sent his strength forward, the two momentums canceling each other. They reached a brief stalemate, broken only by Steve finding a reserve of strength within him and rolling on top of Bucky.

His position didn't last long. Bucky raised his arms and wrapped able fingers around Steve's neck as the two rolled again. Once Steve was safely underneath Bucky, he started punching the Captain, his human hand still at his neck, the metal one biting into Steve's skin.

"We've got a problem." Natasha said, both in Steve's ear and from across the clearing.

"What is it?" Thor asked. "I am not far."

"It's Barnes."

"The Winter Soldier?" Came Tony's voice.

"No." Natasha said, "Steve's best friend. Bucky." She said, and even though Steve was in the process of being beaten to a bloody pulp, he was grateful. Nat understood. Of course she would. She understood how much Bucky meant to Steve. He regretted ever doubting her.

With her words, Steve finally found purchase. His blood jumped in his veins, the adrenaline spiking, and for a moment he felt _powerful_. He spat blood into Bucky's face, wound an arm around his neck and rolled once more. This time, Steve wasted no time in grabbing Bucky's arms and pinning them to his chest. The Soldier struggled underneath him, but Steve was still thriving with his own serum, his heart beating rapidly.

He was conscious of the others arriving in the clearing, and he knew there were more important things he needed to ask now that he'd won. There was just one answer he needed first.

"_Why'd you do it_?" He asked, his voice ragged with fervor and pain and excitement. It came out like a raw, unchained roar.

"Do what?" The Winter Soldier shouted back, jerking underneath Cap's grasp.

Steve laughed, suddenly, a chest-shaking, ground shuddering, sarcastic laugh that came straight from his stomach and lungs. Bucky stopped struggling for a few moments, terrified and confused. The other Avengers in the clearing paused, watching their Captain seemingly come apart.

He wasn't however. His question had been answered. So now he had full, complete control. "You're not Bucky." He began, his voice dark and loud. "You're not even the Winter Soldier."

"Cap?" Someone asked, probably Tony, full of concern.

Steve pressed his hands harder into Bucky's struggling wrists. He felt the eyes on him, the concern and worry all around him, but he continued. "The Winter Soldier saved my life." He said, and felt the air freeze around him. He hadn't admitted this to anyone. Not even himself. "I _wanted _to drown in the Potomac that day." He admitted. "And Bucky pulled me out. You, Sandman, are not him."

Bucky smiled. Actually smiled, teeth and all, and then his form shimmered and disappeared from underneath Cap. He found himself clutching at air.

There was the sound of slow clapping coming from behind Steve, and he spun, scrambling backwards. "Sandman, huh?" A voice said, but Steve could not see who it belonged to. "Is that what you're calling me?" he laughed. "You caught me!" He said jovially, and then the voice was closer, whispering conspiratorially, like Steve and him shared a secret. Like he knew the decision that Steve had made when he called the others to the clearing. "Good thing you chose right," The voice was a whisper on the wind, bubbling with laughter.

"Show yourself!" Thor demanded from Steve's right.

The voice just laughed, surrounding Steve and his team. They all stood frozen, both distracted by Steve's admission, and confused as to where the 'Sandman' really was. For a moment, Steve felt sorely outmatched. He glanced to his side, and saw his shield laying forgotten in the grass near Tony's feet. He was too terrified to move, lest he be attacked by the disembodied enemy. His eyes met briefly with Tony.

_Now_? Tony seemed to ask, his face panicked and serious. With a subtle shake of his head, Steve told him to wait. The time hadn't come yet. His eyes dropped from Tony, away from his shield, back to the place where Bucky had laid a second before. He put a trembling hand to his nose, which had broken somewhere between crashing into the bench and now, but he found no blood. The nose wasn't even broken anymore.

"I hope you don't mind," The voice said again, the time near Clint. It pulsated with darkness, ruffling Clint's hair with every word. "But I brought along a few friends." Clint stiffened immediately, whirling around. But there was no one there.

The Sandman was a psychopath. And he wanted to defeat an enemy of equal caliber, thus he wasn't using any of his unfair mind tricks to trap them within a nightmare and take them down easily. He wasn't going to put them in a nightmare. He wanted the pain. He wanted the chaos, and the only was he was going to get it was by toying with them. That was obvious now.

"They were very interested in you, Hawkman." Sandman continued.

"It's Hawkeye, dumbass." Clint shot back. His comment was only greeted with silence.

Once a significant amount of time had passed, the voice continued, "Apparently they've been after you for some time?" The voice was now near Tony, who curled his lips in frustration. The Sandman probably had manipulated all of them into the same daydream. That allowed the voice to stay disembodied. "And they were _delighted _to know that you'd be here with all your friends."

Steve was confused, before he connected the dots. He remembered, on that first day, Barton saying something. _Yeah, um, that sounds like a no from me. I have HYDRA agents on my ass, and no time to have a playdate. Sorry._

Tony cussed, having reached the conclusion a few seconds before Steve did.

The laughter sounded again, and it grew concentrated at a spot right in front of Steve. This time, it swirled through the air, until there was a man made of matter standing in front of them. Steve knew that the daydream had ended, not only because of the sudden presence of the man in front of him, but because of the dozens of HYDRA agents standing in the tree line.

This was now real life.

The Sandman peered down at Steve, and then looked at the rest of the Avengers. His features were hard to make out, but Steve could see he was tall and thin and lengthy. He could see the dark hair and pale features, but everything else was a throbbing blur.

He smiled, and with one last laugh, taunted, "Toodles."

And then he was gone, absorbed the onslaught of HYDRA agents.

* * *

**Last cliff hanger of the fic...not sure how I'm feeling right now. Anyhooooooooooooooo**


	18. Chapter 18

**AN: Let's see how our favorite team deals with this, shall we? Let's see if there's any improvement from the last time they encountered HYDRA. Let's play a game called _spot the diffrences_ lol**

* * *

"Now?" Tony yelled as HYDRA began to charge.

"Now." Steve agreed, rushing to a standing position.

Tony sprung into action, grabbing the shield at his feet and charged forward, thinking with only his heart and his feet, not with his fear. In the corner of his eye, he saw Steve slink beside Natasha and draw a gun from her holster. She grabbed his wrist, warning in her eyes, before letting him take it. Barton drew his bow and began to fire. The Hulk roared and thumped forward. Thor held Mjölnir aloft and thunder made the earth tremble.

The battle had begun.

Tony was not used to the heaviness of the shield, so it took a few moments to get acclimated. He was not nearly as proficient with it as Rogers was, but that wasn't the point, now was it?

He listened as bullets pinged off the shield and continued to barrel forward, knocking people down with the weighty might of the shield and letting Steve finish them off behind him.

Tony kept pushing down the flashes of memory he'd get here and there. He flooded away the mental images. Yinsen. Fire. Obie. So much betrayal and culture shock. That damn car battery hooked into his chest.

"On your right!" The captain shouted, and Tony twisted and blocked himself with the metal. "Toss it, Tony." Steve commanded, and Tony did as he was told, ducking his shoulder and throwing the thing like Steve had demonstrated in the lab several hours earlier. It bounced off one man only to hit another, effectively killing the both of them, and then returned to Tony.

"Cool." Tony said, momentarily distracted by the blurry shine. Creds to his father, because that thing was, as he'd said, _cool_.

He found two enemies on both sides, and blanched in terror, before both of them suddenly dropped right next to him. One of them had an arrow in his back, and the other one had been, well, squished. Tony looked up, silently thankful for the giant green man next to him.

He refocused his attention back into battle, hopping over dead bodies and shoving the shield back into people. He wished for an Iron Man as the terror sunk into him and the blood stained his shoes. He kept going.

* * *

Barton had been stabbed.

He'd gotten himself isolated from the group, separated from them by a mass of dark-clad HYDRA warriors, and they'd gotten too close to shoot.

One of them stepped forward and engaged, trying to rip his prized bow from his hands. "You're kidding me right?" Hawkeye had said, kicking him smoothly in the stomach. The man had not let his grip go on the bow, even as he fell. Clint felt his weight lurch forward, and then the weapon spun out of his hands. He watched it come to rest in the grass just under the mass' feet.

Crap.

"I might need some backup here." Cap said through his comm, but Clint was currently busy.

"Same." Clint responded dryly.

He reached behind him and pulled an arrow to use as a knife on the circle of people enclosing around him. He took two down with little effort, only to have four more appear. _Cut off one head, two more will take its place. _There was blood spattered up his muscular arms, and dripping down his Kevlar covered chest. He repositioned the arrow in his hand, nodding at the enemy as if to say, _Come and get me, bitch_.

And they did. He was a trained super-agent, but there were at least ten of them now, each one focused solely on him. He found his quiver being tugged at until the straps broke. It too was tossed aside. His arms became trapped behind his back. Clint struggled to break free.

And then there was a knife in his side. He hit his knees, stunned by the way the metal had broken through the Kevlar, feeling the pain acutely. The gasp that escaped him was wet.

"Thor, you're on Clint." He heard Cap say in his ear. He had no idea what the meant.

The knife in his side felt similar to the knife in his back all those years ago. There was laughter. His brother's.

"But you said…" Thor started, like they'd previously had a plan that he'd been in on.

"Change of plans. Clint. Now." Cap said, sounding angry.

Before Clint could blink, and before they could stab him in the neck and end it all, there was a loud BOOM. There was darkness for a split second, and when it cleared, Clint saw ten HYDRA agents, each electrocuted to a smoking crisp. Barbequed brains spilled out from their ears, and blood seeped from their charcoaled bodies.

Thor sent his hammer flying, taking guys out around the perimeter. While he did so, He picked up Barton's bow, strung it, and sent an arrow flying.

As he tried to pick himself up, Clint watched as Thor handled his weapon with accuracy. He didn't want to waste the strength he was using to recover by telling him to get the hell away from his weapon, so he only watched. He wondered why the hammer wasn't coming back.

The pain was clouding over him, and he looked down at the knife in his side. Absently, he pulled it out. A torrent of blood came with it, as well as a weak, wet gasp from Clint's mouth. An agent approached him, and Thor zeroed in on the enemy and hit him in the stomach. With his own blood-saturated knife, Clint finished him.

The exhaustion was heavy around him at that point, his breathing slowing. _This is my third bag of popcorn. So if we're late _and _I puke all over the stage we might get kicked out._ The yellowed flaps of the circus tent flapped. The knife stung.

The wound was deep enough to never heal.

"Stay with me, Hawk." Thor demanded, both in his ear and at his side. He clung to the way his accent slid along the 'a' in his name. For right now, it was all that Hawkeye had. "Anthony, I'd recommend that you summon your JARVIS."

Clint was confused. What the hell was Thor saying? Clint whirled, put the same knife in another guy's neck, and listened in his comm. link for a moment, breathing heavily. "JARVIS, you know what to do." Tony said, leaving Clint even more confused. It must have been the injury. Or maybe this was just a dream. Wouldn't that be ironic.

"I'm hit." Clint moaned into his comm. "If you have a plan, I suggest you start making it work."

"What?" Natasha said, her voice worried in his ear.

"Already done, Everdeen." Tony said, breathless.

Clint waited. The only thing that was happening was Thor was mishandling his bow and Clint didn't have the heart to tell him to put the damn thing down. That was _his _weapon and he never, _never_ let anyone touch it.

Until now. He watched as Thor strung it and fired, over and over, and there was an odd sort of rightness that Clint was confused by. And then he realized it was because he was _ok_ with Thor using it. After all, it was an old-fashioned weapon, and Thor probably was well acquainted with it.

Clint groaned, fighting away the fatigue as well as another stray HYDRA agent. He managed to punch him in the head when he heard the whirring. It grew louder and louder, but it still was slight over the sound of the fighting. He looked up to the sun stained sky and saw a compound cube spinning toward him. Right toward him.

A bomb. It had to be. Clint started running, throwing his hands to the side and trying to get out of the impact zone while he still could. He wasn't very fast, and he kept limping and tripping and putting his hands to his side. A quick look back told him that not only was the bomb still in the air, but it was _following_ him. And it was gaining on him.

He bit back a scream as it enveloped him, and then the whole world went black.

* * *

Steve had been separated from Tony. But it was ok, because from what Steve saw, he was enjoying using his shield. And he was getting good at it, too.

Steve was in the thick of it all, surrounded by all sides with hundreds of HYDRA. He was fighting like hell.

He had a strange sense of déjà vu, like he was back in Germany, fighting Schmidt and HYDRA with a set of his closest friends. He let himself smile at the memory. And then he landed a fist in someone's stomach.

He froze when he saw what was coming. There were two giant robot things, each with one man sitting in it, controlling its movements. They were big—bigger than Iron Man, bigger than Hulk, and covered in thick black metal. They raised their hands, and bullets sprayed from their wrists. Steve dodged to the side as HYRDA agents spread out, letting the robots deal with the Captain, moving on to a different Avenger.

He braced himself to retrieve his shield, only to remember that Tony had it, and unloaded a few rounds of Natasha's gun. As he suspected, they did nothing. He dodged another spray of bullets, his mind racing through scenarios. "I might need some backup here." He said, rolling to his feet as the robot men recharged. There was no response through the comm for a few moments and one glance told him that everyone was busy. Hulk didn't have a comm, otherwise he might have come.

Steve was out of luck. This was one of the rare moments, when the bravery and the courage and everything that made Captain America burned away, and then there was just the man and his fear. He watched as the sensors refocused on him, knowing he couldn't dodge them forever, and he couldn't get close enough to take them down. There was nothing left.

"Same." Clint said in his ear. Across the battlefield, Steve thought he saw a glimpse of Clint, though he couldn't be sure. Then, the relapse finished, and he felt the dedication to the job click back on. A teammate was in trouble.

He glanced to the side again as another few rounds unloaded toward him. "Thor, you're on Clint." He ordered, watching as the Hawk struggled. A sudden swell of desperation choked up his throat, but he pushed it down.

"But…" Thor said, just as Steve was skimmed with a bullet. He muffled his cry with his anger, "Change of plans." He gasped. "Clint. Now."

One HYDRA agent jumped on Steve's back, digging his foot into his new wound. Steve instantly dropped backwards with a grunt of pain. Fortunately, he landed right on the son of a bitch, and a quick shot silenced him forever.

Unfortunately, that left Cap in a pile of tangled limbs on the ground, which would take a few moments to get out of. The giant bullet bots advanced, shifting their arms down. Steve's heart rate picked up as he struggled to free himself. He had about three seconds, he presumed, before he'd become a pile of bullet-ridden meat.

And then something amazing happened. Thor's hammer, intent on returning to its owner, banged into the back of one of the robot's heads. It spun out of whack and hit the ground with a thud. One of the robots reeled and then fell, the technology obviously new and untested.

Steve managed to roll over and pick himself up as the other one recovered from his surprise. Cap's mind was completely blank, white with fear and determination, when he picked up Mjölnir from the ground and let it fly.

Only did it occur to him what he did when the hammer flew back to him and settled itself weightlessly in his hand.

He looked down at it in his hand with a wide, blue gaze, his heart jumping into his throat. He spun it in his hands, mesmerized by the way the afternoon light bounced from its shiny surface. He was conscious of people talking through the comm. link, and a battle being fought around him, but he felt momentarily dazed. It was foreign and unfamiliar to him, a weapon he never thought he would wield. Hell, he never thought he'd ever fight without his shield.

He took a deep breath in, fighting down incredulity, and spun, hitting an enemy with it in the head.

* * *

"I'm hit. If you have a plan, I suggest you start making it work."

Natasha froze with her hands around some woman's neck. "_What_?" She asked, twisting her neck and feeling the blood drain from her face.

"Already done, Everdeen." Tony was saying.

"Clint, what's going on?" She asked, but he didn't reply. The comm was suddenly silent. _Dammit_.

Beside her, the Hulk roared and smashed people, clearly enjoying himself. "Hey, Bruce!" she called, and he looked at her. "Wanna give me a leg up?" She asked.

He just grunted, which she took for a yes, and then snatched a hold of her. For a moment as his grip tightened, she felt terrified. Bullets whizzed by her ear. Then, the Hulk was releasing her, and she was finding her balance on his shoulder.

She pulled two guns and had them at the ready. Then, lithe and ready, she flipped from the height of Hulk's shoulders and landed squarely on two HYDRA soldiers. Her blood thundered in her ears, but she could think of nothing but Clint as she charged. There were bullets everywhere, hers and the enemies, but she made a steady line of fallen soldiers as she flipped and kicked and shot her way through them.

There was blood on her face, not her own. It reminded her of the days when she was Natalia. It reminded her of being unmade, of being pulled apart and molded together until she had become just a grunt. Until she didn't mind that there was blood on her face. It reminded her of who remade her, of being picked off the ground and put into place. It reminded her of a red ledger that had the potential to be drained.

She saw Clint, and he was running. Her heart leapt in her throat. They had a conversation to finish. And if he died on her and they couldn't finish then…then she would…

Then she'd kill him.

She watched in terror as he was hit with something. She came up short, her breath catching, and watched as he descended into a pile of red and yellow. Was it fire? What the hell?

She squinted, sweat pouring down her face, until she realized that it was not, in fact, yellow. It was gold. A few moments passed, and then a new being stood up. Where Clint had stood before, there was a man made of metal.

"Iron Man." She breathed.

"Don't tell Pepper." Tony said, a beat later. "This was still in repair in New York after the Chitauri. Didn't get a chance to destroy it." He paused for a moment, probably fighting someone. "Not a scratch, Barton."

Natasha stayed frozen as Barton stumbled and jerked, and then, suddenly, his hands and feet were glowing and he was _flying_.

She swore the whole damn battlefield paused.

Iron Man seemed to refocus on her, and only two words came from the helmet. "Holy Shit." Clint said, firing up his repulsors and taking out any approaching enemies behind her.

Holy shit, indeed.

* * *

**AN: Part two of three of the apex of this little fic. Part one was the daymare, part two is the fighting, so what does that mean part three will be? **

**I suppose only time will tell. **


	19. Chapter 19

**Hello.**

* * *

They weren't invincible. But together, they were _unstoppable_.

First there was Steve, miraculously holding Mjölnir and beating the crap out of people, unafraid as he stood in the midst of the chaos. He was amazingly graceful as he worked, the epitome of brave, courageous, patriotic, even a bit legendary. If anyone was worthy of the power of Thor, it was Steve.

And then Thor himself, who was comfortable with the bow. He wasn't as good of a shot as Barton, but he still got the job done. Through the comm. link, Clint even taught him how to use the exploding arrows. When the first one landed and a few dozen HYDRA bastards were taken out, there was a large amount of pride in Clint's voice as he congratulated the god, and a ping of victory in Thor's thunderous shout.

And Clint? Clint was a natural at being Iron Man. He had a lot of help from both JARVIS and Tony in his ear, but he was a quick learner. He whizzed around the battle, helping out where he could. He utilized his repulsors and the shield in Tony's hands, letting the beam bounce off the vibranium and take out a few dozen soldiers. He felt amazing.

Tony was tired, but he kept moving, kept working, his arms leaden with the shield, but his adrenaline and excitement keeping him going. His amazement with the shield hadn't gone away. Despite the tacky red, white, and blue paint job, it was an awesome piece of science. Granted, it wasn't super technical, but sometimes simple is better, right?

Natasha and Bruce had become attached at the hip. Somehow she found a strange amount of joy in doing flips off his shoulders, and the Hulk enjoyed helping her. Since his transformation had been controlled, Bruce was still in control of himself and the Hulk, and he found himself enjoying Natasha's company. He smashed and she darted around and took care of the extras. At one point he'd taken her and spun her in a wide circle, and they'd taken out every HYDRA guy in their diameter.

The plan was working, because it allowed them to stay a step ahead of Sandman, who was somewhere in the vicinity. They'd surprised him and each other. This was unparalleled, and so there was no precedent, no way for Sandman to get inside their thoughts and manipulate them into losing.

The result was that the battle was fairly quick. There was a buttload of HYDRA freaks, but the Avengers managed to get it done, and rise to the challenge.

They fought until he was the only one left.

* * *

"Where'd he go?" Steve asked, leaning over and putting his hands on his knees, letting himself breathe. Around him, the ground was littered with bodies and glittering red. He closed his eyes, regretting the carnage for a moment.

"No idea." Clint touched down beside him and flipped the helmet up. His face was gray, but JARVIS had been taking care of his wound for the time being. Apparently, the knife hadn't punctured a lung, just scraped a rib, and thus Clint had refused any medical attention. The battle was far from won.

Tony looked down at Cap, and Steve could feel his eyes probing him. In return, Steve took brief inventory of Tony. There was blood in his hair, probably from a quite nasty head wound that was seeping blood near his hairline. His face was scratched and dirty, and his hands were blistered and red, probably from mishandling the shield.

"Anyone see where he went?" Natasha and Bruce walked up. Bruce had turned back, and was clutching his oversized pants to his hips as well as supporting Natasha. She shrugged off worried gazes and glanced down at her swollen ankle. "It's just twisted." She said, and tossed her hair.

Thor was gazing out across the now quiet battlefield. "He is far gone, by now. Any man would be."

There was tired silence, which was interrupted suddenly by a trembling cry from Tony. They all turned, only to watch in terror as the shield slid from his grasp and he hit the ground, his eyes rolling into his head before closing.

Bruce immediately let Clint shoulder Natasha. (Which he did, and she allowed him. The process was surprisingly easy.) He rushed to Tony's side. "Tony?" He asked softly. He lifted the billionaire's eyelids, only to find that underneath, Tony's irises were moving back and forth, back and forth. "Tony?" he asked again, letting them fall shut.

Nothing. Bruce looked up toward the Avengers. "He's already in REM." His sentence was punctuated by a jerk from Tony and a tiny whimper. "He's dreaming."

That could only mean bad things. Steve recalled the murders of the SHIELD agents. Trapped in their own minds. Driven crazy by their demons. It hadn't happened to an Avenger yet, but Steve had _known_ that it was only a matter of time. Steve had naïvely hoped that winning the battle against HYDRA would mean that the end was near. That the Sandman was insane enough only to fight fair so that, once he won, he would be considered more powerful, because he had gone against someone at full power and won. But so far, he'd lost, and that had obviously angered the Sandman. So now was time for the undermining. Now was time when the fighting got dirty. And Steve's strategy had already been all used up.

"The SHIELD agents…"Natasha whispered, and Steve had took do a double-take at the emotion in her voice.

"Oh dear," A voice said, dripping with faux concern. Steve glanced up sharply, and now, leaning over Bruce's shoulder stood a tall, thin man. He looked almost emaciated; his wrinkled cheeks were waxy and hallow. Steve could see every bone in his hand, which rested sympathetically on Bruce's shoulder. "What a shame." The Sandman continued, pressing his eyebrows in like he was about to cry.

The Avengers around him tensed, but Steve suddenly found himself feeling woozy. He registered that Clint had the repulsors aimed, and that Thor's arms were stiffening as he raised the bow. But he himself couldn't raise Mjölnir. Instead, he let the hammer slide from his hands, his head spinning.

"Uh uh uh," the Sandman _tsked _at the visual threats, cocking his head toward Steve. Cap let one knee hit the ground, darkness clawing at the edges of his vision. The Sandman tossed a disapproving look at the weapons, not voicing the obvious threat.

His fellow teammates slowly dropped their weapons, and watched in tense silence as Tony slept and Steve fought off the dreams that tinged his vision.

"What have you done to him?" Clint pressed.

The Sandman shrugged, looking down at Tony serenely, now that the threat had passed. "Him and Cap here are the only ones who haven't broken yet." He spoke simply.

"Not true." Steve gasped, slightly miffed at the use of his nickname.

Not just anybody could call him that.

Besides, Thor hadn't either. He'd been hi susual semi-clueless, overly brave self. And despite his foreign ways and absences, Steve considered Thor just as much part of the team as himself.

"I—"

"I'd hardly call that _breaking_. You admit to having one weak thought at the bottom of the river. But everyone dies, Captain, even you." There was a flash of darkness, and Steve lurched forward. "But you know that, don't you? You spend quite a bit of time thinking about death, particularly your own."

The Sandman removed his hand from Bruce's stiff shoulder and moved to crouch in front of Steve. "What's the matter, Steven?"

His lips were trembling. "…cold…" He managed. _This guy's still alive. _Ice. Blackness. _You were asleep, Cap_. Everything he loved. Falling, falling, burning. The train and the ice. The snow and the death. The blood and the bombs. Burning, falling, icing over. Dead.

"What's your deal?" Natasha asked coolly, hobbling around Clint to put a warm, comforting hand on Steve's shoulder. He reached up to cover her hand with his own, closing his eyes and feeling grounded by the contact.

"Tell me, Mr. Rogers, what you think about your death." The Sandman continued, his eyes and voice both falsely comforting. "Tell the others what you think."

Steve whimpered. And he was drowning. Falling from the sky. Hitting the water with a crash and then the air was gone and he couldn't even scream and his veins were ice cold. Ice cold.

"I can do it for you." The Sandman offered, standing up. "You feel they shouldn't have looked for the Tesseract, but you also feel they shouldn't have looked for you."

Steve ducked his head and felt his chest compress. Blood was dripping down his battered body. The grass was itchy beneath his fingers. The sun was hot on his back. There was sweat underneath his cowl. He focused on those, trying to stay in Central Park.

"We're not going to let you fuck around with us anymore." Clint was saying, and Steve heard him as he fired up his repulsors.

"I think you are." The Sandman said, and this time he gestured to Tony, who began to whimper more profoundly, jerking out and catching Bruce in the side with an elbow.

"_Please_." Tony moaned.

"What do you want from us?" Bruce asked quietly, not meeting his eyes. Steve saw that his neck was green. He cussed inwardly, trying to fight off the sleep. Layer upon layer piled upon him.

The Sandman gave Bruce an approving look. "I like you. I like the monster in you." He replied casually. He raised his eyebrows, lowering his voice as he gazed intently at Bruce. "Reminds me of myself." He said, and Bruce let out an unwilling growl.

"You son of a bitch." Bruce said, "What are you _doing _to us?" The question could have been helpless, but coming in the Hulk's voice, it was actually quite terrifying.

The Sandman looked from each Avenger. The sleeping one with alcohol-drowned demons. The little girl who couldn't remember her childhood, the boy who never had one, the gamma accident, the one whose brother had almost destroyed everything, and their leader. He looked at them and he _saw_. He saw the way the horizon looked green when Bruce felt an episode come one, the way that Clint couldn't even smell popcorn anymore without gagging. He felt the bruised arm and tiny pinprick on Natasha's injection sight. He knew Thor's desperation of being cast out of his own home.

He smiled, like he was going to say something.

Instead, he crossed the group and procured a knife from Natasha's utility belt. "You don't mind, do you?"

She said nothing. They all just watched as he bent over and fit the knife in Tony's hand. "Go crazy, big guy." The Sandman said, and Tony's eyes snapped open. Tony looked around, disoriented, and then his look darkened. He was obviously still dreaming.

As Tony struggled to stand, Sandman refocused on Steve. "How are you fighting me? You should be dead by now, let alone asleep." He felt the desperation building within himself, because he knew he was in no position to fight, let alone fight his own teammate. He had to do something before this escalated. Before someone ended up dead.

Steve smiled, really smiled then. He felt eyes on him, and he managed to look into the Sandman's depthless, black eyes. Behind him, Tony was looking at Thor, his eyes narrowing. "Razza." He muttered, the knife shifting in his hand.

Bruce looked up sharply, probably having some knowledge of who Razza was. They all had seen snippets, of course. Fear soaked dreams darkened with the wet walls of a cave, electrified by the sharp sting of a make-shift electromagnet.

They all had tasted certain want for death, whether it was in their own minds or in the dreams of others. It had been unspoken, the deepest, weakest moment that they all had seen of one another.

Steve thought about the Sandman's words, about how he and Tony hadn't broken yet, about how the team and their emotions were something that be fixed. They couldn't _be _fixed. Memories are inherent and emotions are the side-affects. Maybe he hadn't broken because he hadn't felt the need to.

For all his problems, for all his old-fashioned way of thinking, he knew two monumental truths.

The only way you can go is forward.

And the only people that matter are the one that go with you.

Steve stumbled to a standing position, , and continued to fight off the blackness. "I was," he began, "asleep," he continued, angling himself to the side as Tony began to advance on Thor. "for seventy years." Steve gasped.

And then it started.

Everything broke all at once. Tony lifted the knife, ready to bring it down on Thor, but Steve stumbled into the Sandman, pushing him sideways, and Thor took a step backwards.

The knife swished in a large arc and then it was brought down, swiftly and suddenly, into the Sandman's chest.

Steve's chest was heaving and he cast a long look at the sandman. The heaviness in his head began to lighten.

The Sandman looked at Steve with a bubbling gasp, and then to Tony, who had stumbled backwards, blinking his eyes in rapid succession. And then he looked to Bruce, who was already turning, his skin thickening and greening until he was no longer Bruce.

The Hulk drove the knife all the way in, past the hilt, through his chest, until it popped out on the other side. And then Natasha withdrew another knife from her belt and stabbed it into his neck, just as Clint fired a repulsor beam at him.

The Sandman stumbled forward, eyes widening and dilating in death, and then hit his knees with a resounding thud. He slumped to the ground, dead.

It was over. It was all, _all _over.

* * *

**Or is it?**

**OK, just screwing with you all. The only thing left is to clean up the mess and tie things into nice neat little bows. **

**Maybe. **


	20. Chapter 20

**Because you guys all are beautiful, wonderful, awesome people, and this fic reached 100 reviews when I wasn't even sure what the heck I was doing during the first chapter, I have split this chapter in half, and posting part of it early. Because the happy parts are good stuff too. **

**Anyway, I love all of you a lot. I'm a sappy dork and slightly insecure about my work, and just recently have I been putting it out for the world to see. **

**So I want to thank you all for your ideas and thoughts and favorites and follows because you inspire me. You really do. **

* * *

Jason Carlyle had seen a lot in his career as a New York detective. He'd seen buildings fall and aliens attack. He'd seen drunk people and murders and prostitutes.

But he had never seen that.

There'd been a lot of calls. Hundreds of them flowing into his precinct that something was wrong in the park, spottings of villains and heroes. He, along with ninety percent of the other cops in the area, was sent to check it out. They last time the Avengers had fully emerged, they'd destroyed half the city.

This time the fighting was more concentrated, kept to a small field within Central Park. That wasn't the weird part. The oddest part about all of it was that when Carlyle got there, as a first responder, he found the bloody field, and sitting on two benches sat the Avengers, each slumped with their head in one hand.

"Excuse me?" He asked of them, tossing a panicked look from the line of heroes to the dead bodies in the middle of the freaking park. There was Iron Man, but Tony Stark wasn't in it. And Captain America's shield was sitting at Stark's feet.

None of them moved. Upon closer inspection, he saw they were all completely and utterly asleep.

* * *

When Thor awoke, his felt mildly disoriented. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. There was beeping in his ears, foreign and loud and consistent, and the light around him was tinged orange because of the beige walls.

The only thing that kept him from freaking out was the knowledge of what had happened and where he was. After the fight, they'd all settled on a bench after Tony had said something along the lines that "this was a mess mommy can't clean up alone."

He hadn't realized that the bench would be so comfortable, as hard boards of cracked wood often were not, until he was shaken awake by a groggy Steve. The scene had changed, there were men in blue uniforms everywhere, and something red and blue flashed all around him. Then there was the ambulance ride, in which Bruce had ridden in, Thor had flown beside, and everyone else had driven behind as the large, square-shaped car rushed a still-bleeding Clint to the hospital.

Then in something called an Emergency Room, Tony had made a big deal out of it all, demanding a "private room" saying something about saving the world once. It had all, truthfully, been a blur. They hadn't let them all in to see Clint, because the ICU had a strict rule about only families allowed, and only three visitors, at that.

The five of them had stood, towering over the thin, Asian doctor with the black-rimmed glasses and acne scars on his young face. Thor had crossed his arms and Steve had narrowed his eyes while Tony finally had pushed away the nurse that was trying to bandage his blood-crusted head.

Dripping dirty and soot and blood, they stood motionless in the line, still in their costumes and still in their super-hero mode and the doctor shrunk back but still held his ground. "You guys need your own medical attention."

It was true. Even Thor had gotten a little messed up in the fight. He took a mental tally of all his wounds. Probably a cracked rib and a few bruises. Nothing that he couldn't deal with. As a warrior of Odin, he'd had much worse.

His teammates, mortal as they were, had fared a bit worse. Steve had a bullet wound and a migraine; however Thor was itching to talk to him about the whole hammer incident, so he hoped that the Captain could discuss in depth the manner of battle as he recovered. It was intriguing, the incident. Maybe at one point he would have been offended that someone so…so _normal_ would be able to possess his own power, and despite not knowing Steve very well, he was more interested than taken aback.

Tony had a head laceration and multiple cuts on his hands. He kept complaining about how he should have worn gloves, and of course giving Steve hell for not telling him. Thor suspected that Steve had thrown the shield without gloves before and hadn't even noticed if it hurt or not.

Bruce was suffering from his usual post-Hulk problems, still a little green around the edges and sore, but there would be no lasting affect from the battle. The Hulk was almost as invincible as Thor himself was. Lastly, Natasha had a fractured ankle and a few other knife wounds, but she acted as if she didn't notice them.

It was funny how the battle seemed to be already forgotten. There was no solemn silence or celebratory feasting. There was no recounting or mourning or anything. Thor suspected that some of that, the victory stories, the celebration, would come later. But for now they had all moved on to their next obstacle.

It was Natasha, surprisingly that took the first step forward, letting the wall of testosterone be her shield behind her. With a blood speckled face and a limp she let herself settle just in front of the line and lifted an eyebrow.

"Only family." The doctor said again, his eyes wide.

There was no hesitation, no pause or stop or even thought. The next words had stemmed from a tumultuous week full of emotional agony and highs and lows and fighting and love and there was only one natural thing to say.

"We are family."

* * *

Tony saw Thor's eyelids flutter from across the room. He looked up fully from his phone and met the god's eyes, and then nodded a hello to his fellow teammate. He put a finger to his lips and then gestured around the quiet room.

It had been a hell of a day, that's for damn sure.

After Tony had gotten his way and secured the biggest room in the ICU so that all of the Avengers could hang out with Clint, they'd all filed in. After Clint had hit the ER, they'd stitched him back up. By the time he was in post-op, the rest of the Avengers had been taken care of for the most part, and then barreled through hospital rules by making a young looking doctor crap his pants in fear of them.

He smiled. Though he would stick to being the good guy, it was pretty awe-inspiring to use his powers for just a little bit of evil. That's just who he was, after all.

Now, they'd all fallen asleep again. Natasha had pulled her chair next to Clint's bed and had her head nestled in her arms, Bruce was next to Thor by the window, and Steve, unfortunately, was next to him. At the thought, Tony glanced to the side once more with a grimace.

Steve was naturally unassuming, mostly quiet, which made people frequently forget how _big _he was. And apparently, he liked to sleep spread out. He was currently in a position in which his head was at an odd angle and his legs were sprawled in front of him, pinning Tony to the wall. Tony was unsure of whether the position was more comfortable for Cap or for him.

He glanced back at Thor once more, and then checked the time. It had been a few hours since they'd hit the hospital. It was time to get this party started.

"Dude." Tony whispered, shoving Steve. It felt a lot like trying to push a brick wall. "Get off of me."

Steve grunted in his sleep, and Tony saw his eyes slide underneath his lids. For a moment, he hesitated, and then shoved once more. "Hey, Capsicle." He grunted.

Steve's eyes fluttered but didn't open. Tony frowned, and then saw the bandages on Steve's side. He pointed one finger at it, ready to poke Steve where it hurt, when, to his surprise, something caught his wrist.

"I wouldn't do that." Steve said, his voice throaty and half slurred, but very real. Tony glanced up, and Steve's eyes were still closed.

"You're taking up all the room over here."

"I'm not even touching you." Steve pointed out, which was more or less true. He wasn't really touching Tony, but that didn't mean that Tony had all that much room.

"Yes you are."

"My hand on your wrist doesn't count."

"Does too."

"Does not."

"Does too." Tony whined. "Let go of me."

Steve did. And didn't move. "Now get your fat butt away from my personal bubble."

"Maybe _you're _in _my _personal bubble."

There heated whispers had grown, slightly, but they weren't fighting. Whatever this banter was, it was too juvenile to be fighting.

"Am not." Tony shot back.

"Are too."

It was then that their argument, or whatever it was, was cut off. There had been no one else awake but Thor and the two of them, so when the full, plastic cup of water exploded on the wall between them and rained, wet and wild, on the both of them, they jerked to the side.

"You two argue like six year olds." Someone said, and it took Tony a few moments to realize how perfect the aim was, how covered in water both Steve and him was, and then he grimaced at the figure in the bed.

"How long have you been awake?"

"About a half an hour." Clint looked proud of himself, as Steve scrambled to a seated position and Tony wiped water from his eyes.

Tony started grumbling, something about being cold, and then he couldn't help it, he looked at Steve. Steve was now leaning forward, oblivious to Tony's eyes.

"How are you feeling?" Thor inquired.

Clint shrugged. "Like I got stabbed." He said, and his voice had a hard edge and suddenly the whole room felt awkward.

There was too much already unsaid, too much that they all knew. Tony sucked at emotions. He sucked at all this mushy gushy brain craziness and the turmoil had been too much.

Tony did the only thing that he could. He groaned, "Are we going to turn into a soap opera now?"

Thor, Clint, and Steve all looked up at him sharply. He thought for a moment that he'd said something completely wrong, something that undermined everything that they just went through. He knew how they would feel about that. How trivializing pain made it hurt more. How each teammate brought different demons to the table that demanded to be vanquished. How maybe seeing past his own nose was the _least _he could do.

Instead of Clint throwing another cup of water, or Thor threatening to hit him in the head, Tony looked at Steve, and found, with surprise, that there was half a smirk on his face.

"What?" Tony demanded, and then no one's eyes could meet his, not because they were mad, but because they were each trying to hide identical smiles.

"It's just…"Steve began, his eyes drifting toward Natasha's sleeping form. "good to be normal again." He said, and Tony found that to be the most goddamned ironic thing coming out of Cap's mouth.

There was no such thing as normal. Not in this world. Not in this life.

Because _normal _is what everyone has. An average life, a picket fence, two and a half kids, a white house in the suburbs. American dream type stuff. Normal isn't a hospital room full of magic and science and a demigod and two assassins. Normal is not becoming friends with someone through their past. Normal is not this feeling that was bubbling up through him, warm and vivid and real. To him and to everyone else in this room, life is a whirlwind, and it never settles down enough to have anything to consider normal, like a family.

Until now. Friends are the family you chose and options are a beautiful thing, when you have them.

Tony looked around the room once more. What would Cap consider normal, anyway? A case of pneumonia and Bucky in the next room? Blackness and coldness and fear?

No, that wasn't normal. There wasn't such thing as normal.

There is, and only ever will be, the unnatural, the opposite of average.

Tony saw his teammates. He remembered the fear of dreaming and the complete emptiness from before. He remembered blinking out of the rage and finding that he almost killed Thor. He remembered being manipulated and taken apart so that everyone else can see.

He looked at his team, bleary and bruised but alive, and they weren't normal. But for once that was good enough.


	21. Chapter 21

_Three days later_

* * *

"Ow." Clint said, easing into a seat on the couch. He clutched at his bandaged side. "Ow." He repeated.

"You're milking that injury, Barton." Tony commented, seated on the opposite couch, Pepper leaning against him.

"Give the man a break, Tony." Pepper demanded, not seeing the smile shared between the two men.

"What'd I miss?" Cap said, skidding into the room.

"Nothing. You're only two minutes late, Candy Cane." Tony said, idly, absently taking Pepper's hand.

"You know, one day he's going to actually strangle you." Clint pointed out.

"And I'll probably deserve it." Tony shrugged, a smile brewing underneath his features.

Bruce and Thor walked into the room then, chatting about the television, which Thor had taken to calling the 'magic box'. It was annoying. Bruce was trying to convince him that it was science, and not magic, but Thor would hear none of it.

"…and how do you explain that, Science man!" Thor asked triumphantly, like he'd won the argument.

"There's an outlet that it gets plugged into, Thor." Bruce replied.

Thor grimaced. "Odin's beard." He cursed.

"Who are we missing?" Clint cut in, tapping his fingers impatiently.

"Just Natasha," Steve said, settling in next to Clint. Bruce glanced at Clint and cocked an eyebrow at him, but Clint looked away.

"I'm here, I'm here." She said, appearing suddenly at Clint's side. She perched herself on the edge of the couch next to him, making him feel vaguely uncomfortable.

The team, finally gathered, settled into comfortable silence for a few moments, doing nothing other than enjoying each other's company.

"Wait," Pepper asked, sitting up slightly and glancing around the room, "Can I ask you all something?"

"Whatever you wish, Miss Pots." Thor grunted, tossing an affronted look toward Bruce.

"What are we all doing?"

There was silence. And then they all started laughing. Pepper looked confused. "What? Did I say something?"

Natasha sent her a grin. "Team bonding." She said, and Bruce added, "It's movie night."

"And guess what's on the menu?" Tony asked, his voice sneakily excited. "JARVIS, go ahead."

"Yes sir." JARVIS sighed.

The movie started with a quiet flicker and then began smoothly in complete gray and white. It flickered slightly, and then the music started. It was dramatic, swing music, as the camera panned across a fake-looking city, probably somewhere in Europe.

The title, bright and black flashed across the screen. CAPTAIN AMERICA. It read, and instantly, the room sprung into action.

Steve started wailing. "No!" he cried. "Tony!"

Thor roared with delight. "Steven, I did not know you were in the magic box." He slapped his knees. "By the Allfather!" he exclaimed.

Bruce shared a look with Clint and they both broke out into sniggers, excited to see the movie. STARRING: CAPTAIN AMERICA flashed across the screen. Clint snorted at the redundancy.

Tony was giving the room a superior look, obviously happy with himself. He met eyes with Steve and taunted, "Technology," he crooned, drawing out the word like he was a ghost saying 'boo.'

Steve covered his eyes with his hands for a moment until the room quieted down, and they all resumed watching the movie. It was quiet and dark, and the music from another age danced across the room like an old friend. In the silence, Natasha reached out a hand and took Clint's in her own.

Clint smiled.

Aristotle had once said that hope is a waking dream. A few days earlier, Clint would have disagreed vehemently. Waking dreams were the kind that made you try to kill a friend. They're the hallucinations that make you get so angry you become a different person. The kind that you have and then are so paranoid that you think another, wholesome part of your life had only been a vivid mirage.

But Aristotle hadn't meant it that way. He meant that in the best way possible. Hope is an aspiration, a goal easily achieved. Hope is a good dream, one in which you can fly, or you strike oil, or you finally kill the son of a bitch who gave you all the nightmares. Hope is the kind of dream you want to have, the one in which you finally have a family. Hope is reality TV show marathons and late night confessions and waking up on a bench to a police officer in your face with your head on a half-naked guy's shoulder. Hope is a hospital room with a constant vigil of five other people. Hope is what happens when you have a dream; a goal so beautiful that there is no other choice than to want it. Clint had found his hope, and he'd also found his dream.

It wasn't perfect, but nothing in life ever was. He'd take what he could get. He'd found his hope in a handful of miscreants as hell bent of getting rid of evil as he was. The road ahead of them was probably full of potholes, but Clint had hope. He had trust. And most of all, he had a team to fall back on. He knew that now.

So maybe hope is a waking dream. And what the Sandman had given them was not. Maybe what the Sandman had given them was purely the _chance_ to have a waking dream. To have that hope. Maybe he'd done it unwittingly, but he'd done it all the same. He was a jackass, sociopath, with more holes in his story than the Black Widow, but him, and him alone, had been the one to pull the Avengers fully together. There were a few points where Clint was unsure of whether they'd make it, where they'd been too ripped apart inside to see the ends of their own noses.

As he watched the movie roll, Clint felt Natasha's warm hand around his. He looked out at the room. Tony and Pepper were together, murmuring to each other here and there, quietly, but fiercely in love. Thor and Bruce were sitting in the ground, flicking each other, half paying attention to the movie and half trying to annoy the other. Natasha was invested in the plot already, leaning forward to watch the movie with interested eyes. Steve was watching with an embarrassed, but still proud smile on his face, his cheeks a faint pink.

And Clint was watching them. He smiled, mostly to himself, knowing that there was a lot more to go. Hell, they'd already fought each other in the three days since they took down the Sandman. Steve and Tony needed to have a long talk about their clashing personalities. He and Nat had to finish the discussion they'd been having the day of the attack. That all would happen in due time. But for now, Clint could relax into the couch. For once there was something inside him that didn't hurt, that felt complete. For once he didn't feel like he was only biding his time until the next mission came. Thus, he let himself sink into the darkness and taste the atmosphere on his skin because, for now, he had the concrete knowledge that, for the first time in his life, he was home.

* * *

**Alright, I'll admit it. I really could have ended this here. But a little while back I got some inspiration, and thus there is one more chapter. **

**Ugh. I'm probably going to post it soon because I seriously just can't wait that long. Anyhoooooo this chapter is a little sappy but good ol' Clint has never had real parents or real siblings, and now he's experienced that, and bro, I can imagine our little Hawk tearing up a little bit, sitting in the dark, finally feeling whole for once. **

**OK, I'll post Sunday night. DON't LET ME forget :D Love you all. :D**


	22. Chapter 22

**Um. **

**I really don't have much to say right now.**

**Just, remember when I told you all a few chapters ago how much I loved and appreciated all of you? Yeah, that's still true.**

**Anyway, this is the last chapter. I have more to say, but you should probably read it first.**

**Goodness I am so nervous right now. **

* * *

Clint wakes up to darkness.

Clint wakes up to darkness and he is _alone_.

He looks around, disoriented for a moment, and then lays back down, waiting for his heart to slow. The room holds its breath.

The fear starts.

"Good morning, Agent Barton." A grossly familiar voice croons, sending Clint's heart skyrocketing into his throat. His thoughts bounce back, covering a long expanse of time, back to blue heat. He spots the god through the darkness. There is a flash of blue, half from his memory, half from somewhere inside him, dark and dank and wet.

"Loki." Clint growls, scrambling back into a seated position. Shit, another dream? How had this happened? They'd killed the Sandman, right? That had been the end.

Right?

"Nice to see you, Agent." Loki replies easily from his position perched at the end of his bed. "And in Dubai. How quaint." He smiles. It is like they are old friends.

"What do you want?" The words choke out his mouth. The lump is growing in his raw throat.

Loki stands up, swishing his costume behind him. "To talk of course. You must have _so _much to tell me. How _are _the others? My brother?" He asks, his voice a shade of scandalous that hints at a double meaning. Clint doesn't understand. Doesn't want to.

His breathing is quickening, and there is something sharp and acidic in his stomach that he wants to ignore. He knows why, of course. It's there in his subconscious. He refuses to acknowledge it, because as long as he doesn't, it is not real. It is easy to pretend when he lies to himself.

Clint concentrates, and for a moment he can feel himself asleep in Stark tower after the movie had ended. He can feel Natasha beside him, their conversation having been finished. He is asleep and he is happy. He was happy. It was fleeting.

_Wake up, dammit_.

"Ah, you _are_ awake, Agent Barton." Loki says offhandedly, like he is reading his mind, causing Clint to look sharply at him. His features are made drastic by the darkness. "What's that quote?" Loki laughs at Clint's expression. "That Poe quote, if I'm correct? Brilliant man. A bit mad, I'd say, but brilliant all the same. That's where I got the inspiration." He cuts off, looking at Clint, and laughs again, "Oh, come off it. I'm just having a laugh." Loki says brightly.

"Get out of my head."

Loki stops laughing and approaches the bed once more. "I am _always _in your head, Agent Barton. You were my right-hand man, after all." He shrugs and turned away. For a moment the demigod looks wistful, lost in a nostalgic past, like they were just buddies, knocking back beers, instead of trying to take over the world. "I am just asking for a quick debriefing."

"Is this real?" Clint asks. He sounds weak. He isn't weak. He is strong. The things inside him make him strong. His past makes him strong. Mistakes made become wisdom, and pain becomes knowledge. He's learned that this past week. He's learned a lot about what makes him strong.

His team made him strong.

"Of course it's real." Loki brushes his comment aside. "So tell me, what did you think?"

"Of what?"

"Of my little game, of course. Was the concept not fantastic? I should be congratulated, I think, on my own cleverness." Loki says, his eyes darkening. "After all, I gave you everything your poor, torn soul desired."

If Clint is a building, then an earthquake is gathering strength, and the cracks are beginning to form. The concrete that he is made of is nothing more than cardboard. And he is breaking.

The Sandman had told them that Steve and Tony were the ones that didn't break. But that was a lie. Because Thor hadn't broke. And Clint hadn't broken. He'd purposefully let his past out. He'd told them everything because that made him strong. That made their bond stronger. His emotions were something that he was not ashamed of in front of his team.

But now he is breaking.

"Yeah? And what's that?"

"A family. A brother. A home." Loki ticks them off like they are a shopping list, "A connection. Your woman."

Clint blanches. "Me being your brainless slave…?"

Loki barked an interruption, "I'm not talking about _that_, you dundering fool."

"Then what are you…" Clint breaks off, struck by a sudden sense of vertigo. He is in his safe-house in Dubai, in the bed he'd fallen asleep in. He'd just woken up. There is a conclusion to be drawn, but Clint refuses to draw it.

"The SHIELD file on Sandman was glaringly empty, of course. I would have fixed that, but I don't know much about SHIELD protocol. Plus, it makes this reveal _so much _more juicy."

"Aren't you dead." Clint asks in a dull way that makes it seem less like a question.

"What not my brother knows will hurt him not." Loki says nonchalantly. "Besides, I have better things to do than be dead. I have a world to rule. I have you to torture."

"What are you talking about?" Clint asks, his voice fading.

Loki just smiles. The expression is sick and deranged and Clint would be lying if he said it gives him anything but pain. "Was it painful to be ripped open to those people? Did it _hurt_ when they saw inside of you? Did it hurt as much as it did with me? Or was it worse?" Loki takes a step forward. "What hurts more, Agent Barton?" He begins, his voice silky and sweet and soft, "The fact that you went through all of that? Or the fact that none of them know?" Clint shakes his head, trying as best as he could to focus on his sleeping form back at Stark tower. As if the physicality of the motion would help. It was fading from his mind. "When Barney stabbed you, did you cry, Agent Barton? How did it feel to lose your family?" Loki taunts, getting closer and quieter with every word. "How does it feel now?" Panic settles into Clint's skin, causing his hands to tremble. It hurts to breathe.

Clint scrambles away. "Get away from me." His feet hit hardwood floor. "Wake up." He cries, mostly to himself. His eyes begin to burn. Everything is pain and the world is black and the truth is even darker.

"You do not get to wake up from this nightmare," Loki looks proud of himself. "Not when it's your life." Loki then has the audacity to smile at himself. Like this isn't anything more than a practical joke. Like it has a punch line and it is funny for a moment and then Clint can move on, life unaffected.

"This isn't real." He replies backing away from Loki's towering form. "You're not real." His own words taste like chalk. Like he is writing them, screetching them onto a blackboard, and the rain is dripping down, wiping them away. Like they aren't even there at all.

Clint's hands go down to his woundless side. His breath quickens, his heart beating painfully in every one of his veins. Already he can see the holes. Already he knows the truth.

"No." he pleads, because he has nothing else. He feels it drain from him, feels the loss as painfully as any wound he'd ever gotten. "You're lying."

"I lie, Agent Barton, but I tell the truth when it is worse." Loki says, his form shimmering. "And you want to know the truth? None of it was real. You. Were. Dreaming."

Clint feels the tears tighten his chest, his mind whirling. He can no longer feel Natasha in the bed next to him. He can no longer feel himself in that bed either. He can only feel himself standing on the hard ground in Dubai. He can only feel the knife in his heart shoved in a little further. He can only feel the damage as his world crashes around him. He is falling and breaking and unlike before there would be no one there to catch him.

He has no family. No friends. He has his hollow shell of a life and the scars to prove it. He has nothing.

He has a brother that had tried to kill him.

Not a pseudo-brother who'd saved his life or one that called him Legolas or one that made him tea that one time in the hospital.

Just his bow and his arrows and a soul that was currently ripping in two.

And Loki is enjoying it. As his form waivers and fades into darkness, he quotes, "'All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.'" His words are just a poisonous echo.

Then he is gone.

And there is no denying the truth.

Clint stays frozen, absolutely broken, for a moment. He'd been able to see something as raw and wretched as life and find its beauty. He'd been able to see life so clearly, both through his own point of view and the others'. Steve and Tony and Natasha and Bruce and _Thor_.

He feels something in his lungs, fighting its way to come out, a fierce sort of desperation that he can't really pinpoint. Clint finds himself running up the steps and busting out onto the roof.

Nat is there.

She is wearing his jacket.

At the noise, she turns around nonchalantly. "You only slept for three hours. Nightmares again?"

He is still breathing heavily, the smoky, cool wind of the city all around him, the lights flashing, the big buildings of a foreign city illuminated in his peripheral vision. The city is beautiful. Beautiful and cold and alone.

She is looking at him with distanced curiosity.

"Clint?" She asks.

"Yeah. Just nightmares" He replies gruffly, his voice coming out oddly controlled. However, he feels this is the worst lie he's told in his life. _Just nightmares_. Like he could trivialize something that important to him as a nightmare. Like _finally_ belonging somewhere was something to be scared of.

As far as he is concerned, _this _part is the nightmare.

The turmoil inside him continues to burn and he takes a seat next to Natasha. God, everything _hurts_.

There had been no fight. No trading of powers. There had been no hand holding, no movie night. None of it was real. Nothing. None of it. Something that had become his entire reality…. w_asn't real_.

Natasha looks away from him. She doesn't say anything else, and she won't, because she's already exceeded her limit of worry about him for the evening.

Clint lets his gaze fall onto the city, far away. There is wetness in his eyes, big fat tears waiting to be shed. He tells himself he isn't crying. He is a spy. A sharpshooter.

It is just the wind, beating against his eyes. That is not emotion. There is no emotion. There is no room in his life for emotion. Not anymore.

That is just the wind.

* * *

**A moment of silence for the end.**

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**Okay, so now I'm going to please please please ask you not to hate me, and say that yes, this is the end, and if you have any comments you can and definitly should leave them as reviews. I know you probably don't want to do me any favors at the moment, but I'd appreciate it. A lot. **

**I'm really not that good with happy endings. **

**Now a few things about this chapter and the fic in general:**

**1) I wrote this in the middle of the night and then edited it while listening to "A Drop in the Ocean" by Ron Pope over and over, so for extra feels you can go back and reread it with that masterpiece of a song on.**

**2)Yes. Yes it was a dream. Yes I had an English teacher like four or five years ago who said that endings where the main character woke up and it was all just a dream were cliched and over-used. However, though there was subtle foreshadowing, I do believe that many of you didn't expect this, and also I feel its less cliched because, come one, the whole fic is about dreams, so it's not too far out of the question that the whole damn thing is one. **

**3) Loki, as we've established, is the awesome-mind bending-trickster-magician dude, so it's really not that crazy for him to torture Clint by figuring out his teammates pasts, incorporated it into a difficult scheme, and then make Clint fall in love. Though I'll admit it would be a difficult thing for Loki to do, he's pretty insane, and I can imagine the problems he has with Clint now. **

**4)This also explains the lack of Thor, the screwed up SHIELD file on the Sandman, and the fact that though it was a team-fic, there was more Clint-POV and more of a plot line within Clint's story. **

**5) If you liked this, I have a team centric chapter fic that's been brewing for a little while. It's sort of a post-Chitauri invasion in which the Avengers hadn't assembled and thus the world had fallen. I'm only on the prologue at the moment, and I'm literally as blocked as a brick wall, so that may be a few weeks before it hits the servers. Just keep an eye out**

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**As always, thank you so much to all of you for your dedication to reading this and reviewing and being awesome, like you all are. (And please don't hate me). See you all on the flipside**

**~Migs**


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